Welcome back to What Did We Learn. My weekly article - a two-year-long tradition - now begins, where, at the end of every weekend, I release my weekly "What Did We Learn". An opinionated editorial detailing what Demon Deacon fans can take away from the week before that might not show up in the box score.

The Wake Forest Demon Deacons are 4-1, with a less-than-20-point loss to a top-ranked Miami Hurricanes and a road win over a ranked opponent. The second year of the Jake Dickert Era is off to a wonderful start, making last year's success look less like blind luck and more like a trend.

The most recent game, a dominant 57-3 showing off the Stanford Cardinals, was another exclamation on what is being built in Winston-Salem.

But what exactly did fans, and maybe the rest of college football, learn about their team?

Some Things Are Better Left in the Dark

The Demon Deacons look around the landscape of the ever-changing college football world and wonder what more they have to do before earning a prestigious Top-25 ranking. That's an achievement the program hasn't seen since 2022, the last unorthodox year of college football.

A two-possession loss to a top-five-ranked Hurricanes team should qualify as a "quality loss," and a road win over a ranked opponent should have been enough to turn heads. Still, none of that mattered, and the Demon Deacons, despite putting up their largest margin of victory in school history during a conference game, were left out.

Maybe that's the darkness that Dickert mentioned when he took the job.

Maybe it's unfair that the Demon Deacons haven't been included in the club yet, or maybe it's the perfect amount of ammunition for the program to understand that the job isn't over, and that one measly number next to their name in the middle of the season hardly moves the needle for what they are trying to achieve.

It's easy to get caught up in the pageantry of the sport, and how making oneself look the most appealing wins the votes in the AP poll, because after all, it's all about that number next to the name. But, what about the votes of the fans, and of the hearts of college football enthusiasts across the country?

Yea. Nevermind. You're right. Numbers do matter. They matter a lot, actually. So, how about I list some numbers that matter right now?

No. 16 and No. 25. The rank the Demon Deacons offense is at in points per game and yards per game, averaging 36.6 points a game and 445 yards a game, through the first five weeks of the season.

Here is another number. 130. The rank for the Deacs across all FBS teams in penalties per game is an average of 9.2 per game, making them among the 10 most undisciplined teams in college football.

Numbers do matter, but they don't tell the full scope of a team. The Demon Deacons are still in the dark, perhaps as Dickert intended. Numbers say a lot about a team, but don't tell the full scope, which is why the rankings don't matter, just the results on the field.

Work in the dark, and find a way to shine. Eventually, it can't be ignored.