• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Wake Football Summer Thread

bmoneydeac said:
I love how two marginal talents like the Orlebars will always be remembered on the boards as the guys who criticized Ethan Reeve.

I feel like Reeve went from unconventional idiot to unconventional genius back to idiot as the talent level of our players vacillated.
Click to expand...

Daniel leaves MSD at 270 and gets into Appys strength program and plays his last two years at 290. Wins two national championships and receives Southern Conference and regional honors. Not sure about his brother.
 
Interesting article from the Fayetteville Observer:

College football preview: Wake Forest DB Devin Gaulden embraces fresh start
By Stephen Schramm - Staff writer | Updated 11 hours ago

WINSTON-SALEM - When Wake Forest defensive back Devin Gaulden went through his first practice with his new team, he'd only been in town a few days. He hadn't begun unpacking his stuff and he didn't know his way around campus.

But those were just small details. The Miramar, Florida, native wasn't worried about how he'd adjust to his new, unfamiliar surroundings.

"I'm 22 going off to college this time, not 18," Gaulden said. "It's a little bit smoother, a little bit easier for me to focus on what I'm here for."

Wake Forest football: Season preview

Gaulden spent four seasons at Wisconsin before transferring to Wake Forest in the offseason. And while in Madison, he crammed in more than his fair share of tough luck and perseverance.

As a result, he brings with him the kind of valuable experience his young comrades in the Wake Forest secondary need.

"That's what kind of drew me here," Gaulden said. "I feel like we have a lot of talent here, it's just young."

The bumpy journey that's given Gaulden his perspective began before the start of his freshman year at Wisconsin. In preseason workouts, Gaulden said he was pushing himself hard. When his right leg began to ache, he thought it was shin splints.

One day, it got so bad he went to the training staff to ask for ice. Instead, the trainers opted to take a closer look at the leg. What they eventually found was that Gaulden had fractured his tibia.

After the leg healed, he played in six games for the Badgers. The next season, Gaulden was ready to play a larger role, but while making a tackle in the fourth game against UTEP, he felt his left knee buckle. He put a brace on it and kept playing, but he said it felt unstable.

It turned out that he'd torn his ACL. He needed surgery, meaning his season was done.

But it got worse. He needed two more surgeries after staph infections complicated things. And while he was rehabbing, he tore the patella tendon in the knee three times.

The run of injuries ended up wiping out his junior season.

"It was tough," Gaulden said. "For a time, every time I went to the doctor, I thought it was bad news."

In all of this, Gaulden was able to find an upside. He said that it strengthened his faith. Whether or not the knee gives way again, he said, isn't in his hands. He just has to trust that everything will work out.

He said it also gave him a renewed appreciation for the mental side of the game.

Without being able to play, he said he spent more time watching what coaches did and what they expect out of their players. He said he became a much smarter player because he had no other choice.

"Coming back from those physical limitations, physical setbacks, I had to make sure I was sharper mentally," Gaulden said. "So when I got back, me not knowing what was going on was the last thing that was going to keep me off the field."

The preparation paid off last season as Gaulden played in all of the Badgers' 14 games.

He said that despite the close friends he made while in Madison, the idea of transferring took root last spring. He had one season left and he was ready to play a larger role.

Wake Forest was one of the schools he looked at coming out of high school. He remembered that he liked the vibe. As the offseason wore on, he made the choice that it would be where his college career finished.

Now, if he could just figure out his way around campus.

"I'm still low-key getting lost sometimes," Gaulden said. "Everywhere I go, I've got to have someone walk with me."

Staff writer Stephen Schramm can be reached at schramms@fayobserver.com or at 486-3536.

Devin Gaulden

Class . Graduate student

Height . 5-10

Weight . 190

2014-15 (at Wisconsin)

Games . 14

Tackles . 9

Pass breakups . 2
 
Lohengrin said:
The proof is in the pudding. Folks only have to look at the play of the OL on the field to see how un-strong they were, validating Clawson's statements.

And if the strength program wasn't unconventional, why did the Orlebars leave Wake due to the strength program?

When I was living in State College, PA, I went to a fitness program where the trainers attended Ethan Reeve's seminars at Wake and they were telling me how unconventional it was, and comparing Penn State's strength program unfavorably to Wake's. I believed it at the time because it was in 2006-07, but you only have to compare the effectiveness of the players on the field to judge the truth of the matter, allowing of course for the higher talent level of Penn State's players. I don't know anything about the program myself save for what I've heard from people I have no reason to doubt, including Clawson, and the actual product the Grobe program put on the field. Wake really never had the OL problems in the past that emerged as a chronic epidemic during the Grobe regime.
Click to expand...

no matter how much arguing is done we will never be able to prove causation. Your proof is in the pudding is hilariously superficial. Who can say whether the lack of O line play was due to talent, coaching and development, scheme, lobo, etc. Trying to isolate it as a strength issue seems inane. Even within the field of strength and conditioning there is so much uncertainty as to what actually results in better athletic performance on the field.
 
We had two OL coaches -- Lobo and Heimbach -- and we had the same result (and the same result last year with Clawson). The strength program is a constant.

I agree it's hard to prove causation, but I set out a theory that makes a lot of sense to me when other theories have more holes in them. Do you dispute what Clawson stated about the poor condition of this team in its strength numbers? If so, why?
 
We do recall several recent players, including M. Camp., worked out off campus and at least one promising OL left the program over issues with the strength program.
 
I don't have a dog in this fight, but one explanation for Clawson's comments was the number of young players on the Team. So. . .low strength numbers because 75% of the Team was 18 or 19 years old or because Reeves was an incompetent douche bag? I don't know. Don't really care either.
 
Lohengrin said:
We had two OL coaches -- Lobo and Heimbach -- and we had the same result (and the same result last year with Clawson). The strength program is a constant.

I agree it's hard to prove causation, but I set out a theory that makes a lot of sense to me when other theories have more holes in them. Do you dispute what Clawson stated about the poor condition of this team in its strength numbers? If so, why?
Click to expand...

If you have some spare time, please be my guest and do some googling and see if you can locate some other teams' (preferably comparable ones) strength numbers. I know some teams in the past make their top performers' numbers public for pr but who knows maybe there are more figures out there. If you find these then I'd be willing to take some time and dig up some of the records I have on the strength numbers for Wake's team during Grobe's tenure and we can compare and at least put to bed the question of whether strength numbers under Grobe were significantly lower than other teams or if Clawson's experience is the result of us having a young team or (careful what you wish for when you start digging) whether Clawson is blowing smoke to give himself some breathing room.
 
P4nthers11 said:
If you have some spare time, please be my guest and do some googling and see if you can locate some other teams' (preferably comparable ones) strength numbers. I know some teams in the past make their top performers' numbers public for pr but who knows maybe there are more figures out there. If you find these then I'd be willing to take some time and dig up some of the records I have on the strength numbers for Wake's team during Grobe's tenure and we can compare and at least put to bed the question of whether strength numbers under Grobe were significantly lower than other teams or if Clawson's experience is the result of us having a young team or (careful what you wish for when you start digging) whether Clawson is blowing smoke to give himself some breathing room.
Click to expand...

it's the classic 3-envelope story.
 
@P4anthers Lol I can't come up with other teams' strength numbers so while I appreciate your kind offer that's not a real feasible avenue for me. If Clawson was the sort, I suppose he could lie but I don't believe he's that sort. I think people will just have to trust their own observations and experiences with this matter. For my part I know it offers an explanation for why our OL has been so historically bad across many players and OL coaches during the Grobe years till present. Poor recruiting doesn't explain the full extent of the drought we've had.
 
Here's an article talking about Clawson's comments on strength numbers: http://espn.go.com/blog/acc/post/_/id/78460/story-of-the-season-wake-forest

When the new coaching staff arrived at Wake Forest, they began their evaluation of the program with strength tests. The numbers, Dave Clawson said, were not encouraging.
Clawson had coached at all levels of football, but what he found at Wake Forest was some of the worst results of strength tests he’d seen, and before he’d ever run a practice with the Demon Deacons, he knew there would be problems offensively.
“Our strength numbers were not anywhere close to what a Division I football team should be, let alone an ACC team,” Clawson said. “Those are things that take time. You’re not going to go from bad strength levels to good strength levels in six months.”
Click to expand...

Nowhere does Clawson try to play the "youth card" in speaking of the weakness of the team, something he clearly could have done had that applied, since that too would've supplied an excuse for the poor performance. No reason *not* to point to youth. But he didn't, not with the OL. And the weakness didn't start in 2014. Grobe's "veteran" OL of 2013 was one of the poorest we've had with only the "wide gaps" trick giving us some time in the backfield for a couple of games. I would expect Grobe era strength people would try to refute this, but again seeing is believing.
 
Lohengrin said:
Here's an article talking about Clawson's comments on strength numbers: http://espn.go.com/blog/acc/post/_/id/78460/story-of-the-season-wake-forest



Nowhere does Clawson try to play the "youth card" in speaking of the weakness of the team, something he clearly could have done had that applied, since that too would've supplied an excuse for the poor performance. No reason *not* to point to youth. But he didn't, not with the OL. And the weakness didn't start in 2014. Grobe's "veteran" OL of 2013 was one of the poorest we've had with only the "wide gaps" trick giving us some time in the backfield for a couple of games. I would expect Grobe era strength people would try to refute this, but again seeing is believing.
Click to expand...

It's called buying himself some time. Smart tactic. I think Clawson will win some football games, but the guy is a salesman.
 
Lohengrin said:
@P4anthers Lol I can't come up with other teams' strength numbers so while I appreciate your kind offer that's not a real feasible avenue for me. If Clawson was the sort, I suppose he could lie but I don't believe he's that sort. I think people will just have to trust their own observations and experiences with this matter. For my part I know it offers an explanation for why our OL has been so historically bad across many players and OL coaches during the Grobe years till present. Poor recruiting doesn't explain the full extent of the drought we've had.
Click to expand...

You are like a walking example of confirmation bias and ignorance.
 
Nothing really matters here except that Clawson produces a stronger, quicker OL. Let's just sit tight and see what happens. It is very much a work in progress;yet, progress needs to be evident this season.
 
We could make really good progress and still suck eggs this season.
 
Maybe we should just forfeit all of our games this year and let everybody we like redshirt so we can come back bigger, faster, stronger and older next year.
 
Some notes from first half of the Coaches Show:

Clawson announced that Ty Hayworth will start at LG and Josh Harris will start at Center. I updated the projected depth chart in the OP to reflect this info. A’Lique Terry and Patrick Osterhage will be the key reserves for the OL. Ryan Anderson will get into the mix when he returns from suspension.

Clawson was oddly noncommittal about Kendall Hinton, saying that a decision would need to be made about him in the next week. He was very unclear what he meant. Redshirt? Starter? See some snaps against Elon?

In response to a general question about depth he acknowledged that the OL will be thin.

In response to a question about the RBs, he stated that it will be “a committee”. No surprise there.

He stated that if Wake had typical ACC-level talent on the OL they probably wouldn’t be starting Herron and Haynes this season.
 
Clawson doesn't seem all that committed to Wolford, but I could be wrong.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top