Scouting Report: Akron Zips

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The Deacs kickoff the season against the Akron Zips this Thursday at 7PM on ACC Network. Since Akron has not played a game yet this season, this scouting report is going to be forced to focus mainly on what the Zips did last year, so it may not be the best look into what the Deacs will face on Thursday night.

Right off the bat, the first thing to know about Akron is that head coach Joe Moorhead is sort of responsible for the massive popularity of the RPO in college football. After crafting the system as the head coach at Fordham, Moorhead was hired as the offensive coordinator for Penn State at the end of 2015—the Nittany Lions instantly improved by 14 points and almost 100 yards per game the next season on their way to winning the Big 10 Championship. Since then, almost every team in the country has implemented some form of his RPO scheme, and I would guess it was the foundation of what eventually became the famous “slow-mesh.” I would expect to see plenty of RPOs on Thursday night.

Who will be running those RPOs is kind of up in the air right now. After former NC State QB Ben Finley finally exhausted his eligibility last season, the Zips brought in former Miami and North Texas backup Reese Poffenbarger to take over at QB. It seems as though no one really knows whether or not Poffenbarger will even be allowed to play on Thursday, as he has already played 5 seasons (3 FCS) and may not even be eligible. He applied for a medical waiver to get a 6th year, but the NCAA either denied it or just hasn’t gotten back to him yet, because there has been no announcement from Akron that he is cleared to play. The only other QB on the Zips’ roster who has ever attempted a collegiate pass is redshirt sophomore Brayden Raggow, who was 11-17 for 91 yards last season in games against Duquesne, Toledo, and UMass.

Based on the QB situation and the fact that Akron lost their most explosive receiver, Israel Polk (33 catches, 525 yards, 8 TDs), to Oklahoma State, I think the Deacs are probably going to see a fair amount of runs this week. The Zips have a solid running back in redshirt senior Jordan Gant, who ran for over 1,000 yards and 6 touchdowns last season. He was Akron’s first 1,000 yard rusher since 2008.

Even with a 6th year QB last year and a 1,000 yard rusher, the Akron offense just wasn’t that successful, averaging just under 23 points per game. One reason for that was the Zips could not sustain drives, finishing the season with one of the worst 3rd down conversion rates in the nation at just 31%. Taking a look at their offensive profile from GameOnPaper, there just wasn’t a whole lot working in their favor.

If the Wake Forest defense is anywhere near as good as they were last season, I really don’t see them having any issues with an Akron offense that has a QB with just 19 career pass attempts and an offensive line that lost 3 starters in the portal.

The Akron defense was clearly the stronger of the 2 units last season. The Zips were one of the better teams in the nation on 3rd down, likely aided by their ability to get the quarterback. Unfortunately for Akron, they lost 3 of their top 4 pass rushers in the transfer portal—Julian Laventure (4 sacks) is now at Texas Tech, Bruno Doll (4 sacks) is now at UCF, and Melvin Spriggs (2.5 sacks) is now at Southern Miss. That leaves just Cyprus Durham (3 sacks) and Ronald Hull (2.5 sacks) as the only returning players for the Zips that had 2 or more sacks last season.

Those aren’t the only players the Akron will have to replace this season. The Zips also graduated their top 2 linebackers from last season—Shammond Cooper and Gage Summers—and their top 2 DBs—Malcolm DeWalt IV and DiMarco Johnson. The 4 of them combined accounted for 231 tackles, 14.5 TFL, 5 interceptions and 12 passes defended. Between graduation and the portal, the Zips will be missing their 8 top tacklers from a season ago—such is life for a G6 school in the portal era.

We may get a good chance to see Gio Lopez really show his ability to air it out on Thursday, as Akron was not a great team at stopping the pass. The Zips were 1-6 last season when the opponent threw the ball for more than 200 yards, and they gave up nearly 500 yards passing to Nebraska and 340 yards through the air to UAB. If you take out the games against FCS Duquesne and 0-12 UMass, Akron’s passing yards allowed per game jumps up to 260, which would have put them somewhere in the bottom 10 in the nation—and then they lost both starting corners.

With all of Akron’s losses on the defensive side of the ball, I will be pretty concerned if the Deacs have a repeat performance from last year’s season opener, where they scored 10 whole points. I expect that Wake will have a little rust early, seeing at it is the first game of the season, but by the time the 2nd quarter comes around, I expect them to open it up and start scoring pretty consistently.

Based on last season’s offensive struggles and the loss of so many contributors on the defensive side, I feel like Wake should win this one easily. Of course, since neither team has played a game yet, there is a lot of guessing going on here. Kennesaw State went 2-10 in 2024 and gave the Deacs all they could handle in the opener last year—they finished the season with 10 wins. I guess we will find out how much Akron improved in a few days.

Go Deacs!

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