Wake Forest emerges from a newsier-than-expected off week to play Louisiana on Saturday. The Ragin' Cajuns are 2-1 and lost to Tulane 41-33 this weekend.

At risk of sounding too dramatic: This is about as much of a must-win game as you can have in September. At 1-2 and with a game in Raleigh and against Clemson in the next two, I'm not sure Wake Forest recovers from a 1-5 start to make a bowl. At 2-4, at least, there's a path to winning 4 of 5 between UConn/Stanford/Cal/UNC/Duke (and the game in Raleigh, I think, is not quite a foregone conclusion in the way the Clemson and Miami games are).

As a programming note: I've struck out on finding a stringer to cover this game. Since it's not an ACC game and I'll be in Durham for UNC-Duke, we'll have a remote story on Wake's game. It's not ideal, I hate missing home games ... but it's just where things landed, given the schedule.

Here are some links to get you up to speed:

My Take on the Ole Miss game

My Take on Wake's initial silence about scheduling | My Take to wrap up the scheduling of Ole Miss/Oregon State

PFF quarterly grades for Wake's offense | PFF quarterly grades for Wake's defense