You're Correct!

To enable us to hit clean, crisp wedge shots, you need to make ball before ground contact with a slightly downward blow on the ball.

With a wedge shot, you are using a controlled motion where not much power is needed and where clean contact is imperative in order to hit the ball the desired distance on the desired flight.

After setting up correctly with your weight favoring your lead leg 70% to 30% and the ball central in a narrow stance, you will be in a good position to produce the desired contact. From here, you need to keep your weight fixed and use the lead leg as a pivot point. The arms remain close to the body as the club moves back to keep the clubs radius more constant during the swing; this will encourage a consistent low point of the club head at impact. The wrists gently hinge and the rear arm folds. You will feel like the arms and body are synced up nicely.

From here, you are in a good position to make a clean, crisp strike and hopefully strike the ball close to the target.

When hitting a wedge shot, you want to produce a slightly downward strike on the ball. If you encourage a takeaway which is too wide when hitting wedge shots, you would have to violently narrow this motion on the down swing in order to achieve the desired downward strike. This violent change of direction will lead to inconsistent strikes due to having to time more moving pieces.

If you make a move on the back swing where your weight moves off the ball on to your rear leg, you are moving the clubs low point of the swing behind the golf ball. You want to make a ball then turf contact with a descending blow to hit crisp wedge shots, so keep the weight forward and fixed during the swing.

When you hit a wedge shot, you want to swing on a neutral path at impact in order to transfer consistent energy from the club head to the golf ball. If you swing too much outside on the back swing, you are encouraging a path across the ball at impact. This glancing blow on the ball will lead to inconsistent distance control.