Wake Forest Football / Military Bowl Thread

I figured we could use a new thread for bowl and offseason discussion.

I don’t have access to my BC game replay this week, so no game writeup this week. I may pull something together this weekend at post it in this thread. I’m interested in looking more closely at a number of things, including how BC generated so much pass pressure and whether BC should have been flagged for more PI penalties.

In the meantime, I’m starting to take a deep dive into a few questions that I’m interested in. Here’s the one that I was most curious about…

Q. WAS WAKE’S OFFENSE BETTER OR WORSE THAN 2015?

A. Slightly worse.

Wake produced 320 fewer yards and 3 fewer touchdowns than 2015. The difference in yards is mainly due to a change in the run/pass mix. In both 2015 and 2016, Wake averaged more yards per play when throwing the ball. In 2015, Wake was balanced (the run/pass mix was exactly 50/50). But the 2016 team was decidedly more run-focused (60/40) and that caused the drop. Even though the run game was improved from 2015.

I’ve heard Clawson say recently that a primary goal for this season was to reduce INTs and sacks. They accomplished that, but that was in part a result of simply passing less. The sack rate actually got worse (sacked every 9 pass attempts versus every 10 pass attempts in 2015). However the INT rate did improve (from once every 23 pass attempts to once every 29 pass attempts).

Setting aside the volume of pass attempts, the passing game got worse. Completion percentage and yards per catch both went down, but that was almost entirely attributable to a drop off in production from the S-WR position that went from KJ Brent to Alex Bachman/Steven Claude (primarily Bachman). If you focus solely on pass attempts targeting Cortez Lewis, Cam Serigne, Tabari Hines and Chuck Wade then the completion percentage actually improved from 59% to 61% (Hines and Lewis had the biggest jumps in their catch rates) with a flat yards per completion. However, the S-WRs dropped from a 55% completion rate in 2015 (Brent) to a 40% completion rate in 2016 and yards per completion dropped from 14 to 10.5. The decline in efficiency at that position caused all of the passing efficiency stats to drop.

The change in the run/pass mix hurt the counting stats for most of our receivers. Overall, Wake targeted their outside receivers 22% fewer times, but Cam Serigne (down 43%) and Chuck Wade (down 31%) saw even bigger declines. Tabari Hines stayed roughly flat in terms of pass targets.

The run game improved by every measure. Even though the RBs were asked to carry the ball 26% more times in 2016, they still hammered out a higher per carry average (4.0 in 2016 versus 3.5 in 2015) and reduced the amount of negative yards. Despite missing Kendall Hinton for most of the season, Wake still managed to get more positive rushing yards from the QB position (856 vs 777).

Also, here’s my list of offseason stories to watch (copied from the 2017 recruiting thread)

1. Will Wake hang on to Mike Elko? He's frequently mentioned by Notre Dame fans and media as a good fit for the Notre Dame DC job.

2. Will Duke Ejiofor go pro? I'd be surprised if he has made up his mind one way or another, but man could we use him next year.

3. How will the staff divide up the 1st and 2nd team QB reps in spring practice?

4. Will Wake hang onto Jeffery Burley, or will he flip to Ole Miss? He hasn't received the attention from Wake fans that he probably deserves. If you haven't checked out his highlights, you should. I think he is a soft commit (at best) but I think he genuinely loves Wake. Too early to handicap how his recruitment might go. Wake sent 3 coaches to visit him last night.

5. Will Wake hang onto Mike Allen? Answer: Yes. Great kid from what I've heard.

6. Will Zeek Rodney return to the team? (tip of the hat to OldGoldBeard for the reminder on this one).

I was wondering about Allen. Great news!

Deac94 said:

The change in the run/pass mix hurt the counting stats for most of our receivers. Overall, Wake targeted their outside receivers 22% fewer times, but Cam Serigne (down 43%) and Chuck Wade (down 31%) saw even bigger declines. Tabari Hines stayed roughly flat in terms of pass targets.

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Can anyone offer an explanation for the reduced targeting of Serigne, who was our best receiver two years ago? Regarding the offense regressing somewhat, I think some of that is attributable to the musical chairs situation at QB due to injuries.

Buttermaker said:

Can anyone offer an explanation for the reduced targeting of Serigne, who was our best receiver two years ago? Regarding the offense regressing somewhat, I think some of that is attributable to the musical chairs situation at QB due to injuries.

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1. Injury to Cam for most of the season.
2. Most of his routes are over the middle, which people have pointed out is the area of the field that it's hard for Wolford to get the ball to.

Regressing on offense is simply mind boggling to me.

The running game was better
The QB and WR's had another year of working together/get on the same page

The only thing I can say is that the line continues to not be where it needs to be. There were admittedly a lot of injuries and shuffling around, leading to a lot of freshmen and sophomores as the year went on. This is probably playing a bigger part of our offensive failures than anything else.

You're making excuses for Wolford.

PhDeac said:

You're making excuses for Wolford.

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Wolford has reached his cap as a collegiate player, I don't think there's a lot of doubt about that. He consistently underthrows the deep ball, and that leads to interceptions/pass deflections/wasted downfield opportunities. This allows teams to play Cover 0 or Cover 1, stack the box, and make it hard to find holes to run.

Wolford also creates a lot with his legs that a pocket passer does not have, and quite frankly after Hinton went down he was our only realistic option.

If you think the season's failures on offense primarily land on him that's fine, but I disagree with that assessment.

PhDeac said:

You're making excuses for Wolford.

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I don't think anybody needs to make excuses for him. He is what he is. It's not for lack of effort or even knowledge in my opinion, he doesn't have the physical tools to play well at this level, especially given what surrounds him with respect to the O-line.

Clawson stated in recent WSJ game write-up that so many teams have decided to stack the box and play tight press man coverage on the outside. And that (loose quote), "Our young WR corps has not developed as we thought". Makes sense - hard to get anything going when you can't penalize people for sending 6/7 defenders towards the backfield. Combine that with Cam being limited and you don't penalize defenses for rushing LBs and leaving Cam in a 1:1 matchup. We saw such little zone coverage this year against us - that says it all, really.

To whit, Chip Kelly once said, "Zone read doesn't work if the QB always hands it off" - or something to that effect. Wolford rarely pulled the ball. Hinton gave us this true zone read that had DE on their heels and linebackers having to help over the top of the read DE. We missed Kendall.

JimDuncan said:

Clawson stated in recent WSJ game write-up that so many teams have decided to stack the box and play tight press man coverage on the outside. And that (loose quote), "Our young WR corps has not developed as we thought". Makes sense - hard to get anything going when you can't penalize people for sending 6/7 defenders towards the backfield. Combine that with Cam being limited and you don't penalize defenses for rushing LBs and leaving Cam in a 1:1 matchup. We saw such little zone coverage this year against us - that says it all, really.

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The part that bothers me is, despite knowing this, the coaches have continued to use the same strategy of throwing deep over the top all season. At some point you've got to say, we really aren't capable of that and try something else.

And Duke will ABSOLUTELY go to the NFL - he gets nicked up too much to stay around for another season. Best of luck to him. Hope he is a force in the league.

To build on what Deacsfan27 posted, I’ll mention that Clawson provided an excellent synopsis of the season in the BC postgame when he said that Wake ran the ball better at the beginning of the season and opposing teams began to focus their defense on stopping the run. Stacked boxes. Daring Wake to throw to the perimeter (Clawson emphasized the word daring). Wake was never ever to take advantage.

Wake went back and forth between trying unsuccessfully one game to attack the perimeter with the passing game and the next game trying to run directly into the 8 man (9 man?) box. Back and forth.

One interesting question: if 8 and 9-man boxes are the problem, will Kendall Hinton be the solution? Possibly. I don’t think we know what his ceiling as a passer will be.

With the passing game, it’s hard to separate Wolford’s performance from the receivers. Both deserve some blame. In turn, the problems with the receivers are partly due to just being young. Still feeling the effects of the Grobe era. I remain a strong believer in both Steven Claude and Scotty Washington. It was a rough start to their careers, but Clawson always says that the big jump comes from Year 1 on the field to Year 2.

WR is not a position where the staff has brought in a lot of heralded recruits, and going forward the staff will increasingly be dependent on their ability to develop those less-heralded recruits into legitimate offensive threats.

liveanddiedeac said:

The part that bothers me is, despite knowing this, the coaches have continued to use the same strategy of throwing deep over the top all season. At some point you've got to say, we really aren't capable of that and try something else.

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Nothing else to try. The Coaches (rightfully, in my opinion) decided that Wolford couldn't throw over the middle of the field. Tipped balls were too much of a problem, leading to awful turnovers. They decided to try and win by running the ball, bleeding the clock, and minimizing mistakes on offense. When other teams crowded the box and the LOS, the only way to fix that problem (while not throwing over the middle) was to take shots deep on the outside. Unfortunately, the combination of Wolford and WR play was unable to make that work.

Should the coaches have been more aggressive using the middle of the field with Wolford? Maybe. But he certainly has had a large number of problems with that area in the past 2 years. Should they have gone to Kearns? Maybe- he didn't look particularly sharp to me, and Wolford's running was key to several of our wins this year.

I'm not a huge fan of our offensive scheme (I still don't think we attack the edges all that well). But I also think that once it became clear that Wolford was all we had at QB, that put a pretty solid cap on what we could do and still have a chance to win.

How did Wolford manage to get Cam all those touches the last two years, but somehow can't throw over the middle to him this year?

I doubt defenses would put 8 in the box to stop Hinton. He's much more effective using the edges in the read option. I think all of Wolford's long runs were up the middle on designed runs or scrambles. Not to mention Hinton throws a better deep ball than Wolford.

JimDuncan said:

Clawson stated in recent WSJ game write-up that so many teams have decided to stack the box and play tight press man coverage on the outside. And that (loose quote), "Our young WR corps has not developed as we thought". Makes sense - hard to get anything going when you can't penalize people for sending 6/7 defenders towards the backfield. Combine that with Cam being limited and you don't penalize defenses for rushing LBs and leaving Cam in a 1:1 matchup. We saw such little zone coverage this year against us - that says it all, really.

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He hasn't received as much attention as the OC or ST coordinator on this board, but I really hope we make a change at the WR coach. That position group, to me, has been the biggest disappointment this year

PhDeac said:

How did Wolford manage to get Cam all those touches the last two years, but somehow can't throw over the middle to him this year?

I doubt defenses would put 8 in the box to stop Hinton. He's much more effective using the edges in the read option. I think all of Wolford's long runs were up the middle on designed runs or scrambles. Not to mention Hinton throws a better deep ball than Wolford.

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Cam wasn't healthy, for one. On top of that, completions to Serigne over the middle came with a fair number of interceptions and tips. No idea whether the plus of Serigne catches outweighed the negatives over the course of a season. The fact we were 3-9 2 years in a row suggests it didn't.

DeaconSig said:

Cam wasn't healthy, for one. On top of that, completions to Serigne over the middle came with a fair number of interceptions and tips. No idea whether the plus of Serigne catches outweighed the negatives over the course of a season. The fact we were 3-9 2 years in a row suggests it didn't.

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That's a fair response.

Personally I think we have negative synergy (is that a real thing) on the offensive side of the ball. An offensive line that isn't real good - a QB that has poor pocket awareness and struggles with throws to a lot of the field - and WRs that have trouble getting open and rarely win 50/50 type of balls. Maybe we could survive with just one of those, especially with some creative scheming; however, when you combine them all you have a complete disaster.

As for our running game, maybe it is a more defenders than blockers issue, but it seems that we have multiple OL not getting a block on anyone, as multiple defenders just shoot through the LOS unimpeded. The chance of a slow developing running play working when multiple defenders are on the Wake side of the LOS before the RB finally gets the ball is pretty low. Granted it's from a small sample size, but it does seem like our RBs have more success when Hinton is the QB. For starters, it seems that he makes the hand-off/keep decision faster than Wolford does. Plus, he seems to keep the ball more, so perhaps the defense has to play a little more honest.