What concerns me is Clawson. I've not seen anything on Saturdays that gives me hope. He's "Rah Rah", good recruiter, organizer, big picture master plan guy, but I just don't see it on the field yet. I was ridiculed by some on here for bringing up the Wolford/Hinton issue back in the 4th game of the season. I was always expecting every game after that to see Hinton start...(reasoning after a poor Wolford performance and a good Hinton highlight once he came in), but it never happened. Heard announcers saying during the N.D. game that Wolford was starting because he knew the playbook better. Don't know for sure but it sounded like they had asked Clawson and were likely aware of the questioning from forums like this.
I sent in a question to the radio show via email (never answered) that basically said, if you have to have a brain tumor removed and you can have Surgeon A who made straight As in Med school but has lost 4 of 100 patients on the table or Surgeon B who made lots of Bs and Cs but has never lost a patient out of 100, who would you pick? I think the analogy is fair and accurate to our situation at QB. Hinton was obviously our best chance at winning and he didn't win the job. What I said early on the year I still believe: Hinton may very easily be a Russell Wilson-type ability player in the making. As well as he played as a true freshman, what is his ceiling? He's the best combo QB I've ever seen at Wake. O should be built around his strengths. Not starting made no sense. It made me conclude that Clawson just couldn't see the forest for the trees re: his QB. He may have been upbeat for the Duke game but he was the only one that showed it. Players seemed ready for the year to end.
If we have Wolford pass early and often against Duke, we have a much better chance at winning, IMO. But we choose the Clawson ground ball control game, running our TB or our worst running QB into the line on 60% of the first half plays. Hasn't worked all year but "by golly, we're gonna do it until we learn!" seemed to be more important than winning....just like in 3-4 other games this year that were possible wins. If Hinton had been healthy, the pattern says he wouldn't have come in until late and the game was at least a 2 score difference anyway.... and then brought in only to bring us back to a close loss. BTW, I'm pretty sure he was the O leader in total yards before the N.D. game.
I think a lot of eligibility guys may not stay....that's my prediction, at least. Clawson may be happy as can be that his plan is "on schedule" but I don't see a long train behind him. After seeing our game-day coaching and decisions, I'll be surprised at 6 wins next year.