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Wake Forest Football Recruiting

Hecklinski in at QB at the 8:55 mark in the 1st quarter. Looks like he's the 2nd QB to play for the East team.

This is the first time I remember having a QB in any of these HS all-star games.

Nice 34 yard pass off his backfoot on 3rd and 13 to a WR headed to UNC. All the backfoot throws concern me.

Threw a goal line interception. Nice diving pick by a DB headed to Minnesota.
 
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PhDeac said:
Hecklinski in at QB at the 8:55 mark in the 1st quarter. Looks like he's the 2nd QB to play for the East team.
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Does he look good enough as a 20 year old going against high school students that it was worth not going after anyone good in the portal out of fear that he would decommit?
 
East has a punter named Michael Kern who was just blocked. The 3rd QB from the East gave up a strip sack TD in the endzone.

Hopefully Hecklinski will get another possession in the 1st half. Might be coming up next. West just scored again to lead 24-7.

Hecklinski back in with over 4 min left in the 2nd quarter.

Got banged on his head on a pressure. He may be done for the day. Not as bad as the hit he took in the state championship game, but pretty bad. His face mask popped off the ground.

I don't think Hecklinski came back in. That's fine with me. He got banged up pretty bad.

Based on this game and the state championship, I don't think he'll be ready to play right away. He's a small, reckless gunslinger. He needs to contain that first.
 
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TimmyClutch said:
Does he look good enough as a 20 year old going against high school students that it was worth not going after anyone good in the portal out of fear that he would decommit?
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1. He's 19 and closer to his 19th birthday than his 20th
2. I'm willing to bet there were several other 19-year-olds in the game
3. Clawson obviously prefers stability in the QB room.
 
thatguy2016 said:
1. He's 19 and closer to his 19th birthday than his 20th
2. I'm willing to bet there were several other 19-year-olds in the game
3. Clawson obviously prefers stability in the QB room.
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He will be 20 when the season starts. He is 6 months younger than Maalik Murphy who is going into his 3rd year of college football. He is older than Malachi Nelson and Eli Holstein who were both available in the portal.

But you’re right I’m sure there are plenty of 20-year-old freshmen, BBD was probably one of them. I’m sure not receiving many offers until his junior year has nothing to do with his physical maturity (247 had him listed at 168 lbs this season).
 
He's 10 months older than Dylan Railoa. Oh Noes!

And of course the point stands - he wasn't 20 years old playing in that game, as you said.
 
thatguy2016 said:
BUT HE'S TOO OLD !!
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Buddy, I don't know what to tell you, if you don't think a 19-year-old playing in high school has some advantages over the other players, then why belabor the point. If you think Hecklinski is gonna hit that growth spurt when he gets to Wake, all the power to you.

After this season, our QB room is Hecklinski, Gilliam and potentially Locklan. That may be stability, but its not experience.
 
So ready to let Timmy take over QB recruiting and 80 to run WF's recruiting on the lines. Both are on another level than our staff.
 
TimmyClutch said:
Buddy, I don't know what to tell you, if you don't think a 19-year-old playing in high school has some advantages over the other players, then why belabor the point. If you think Hecklinski is gonna hit that growth spurt when he gets to Wake, all the power to you.

After this season, our QB room is Hecklinski, Gilliam and potentially Locklan. That may be stability, but its not experience.
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Wait - he's 19? I thought he was 20!
 
TimmyClutch said:
Buddy, I don't know what to tell you, if you don't think a 19-year-old playing in high school has some advantages over the other players, then why belabor the point. If you think Hecklinski is gonna hit that growth spurt when he gets to Wake, all the power to you.
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Typically, you’d worry about this if a player was dominating competition through superior physical strength, which is obviously not what Hecklinski was doing. Hecklinski is a highly regarded QB recruit from a lot of sources that do not have a pro-Wake bias.

This is just a weird hill to die on man
 
deacon14 said:
Typically, you’d worry about this if a player was dominating competition through superior physical strength, which is obviously not what Hecklinski was doing. Hecklinski is a highly regarded QB recruit from a lot of sources that do not have a pro-Wake bias.

This is just a weird hill to die on man
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To me, his age, size and lack of other P5 offers is concerning. This coupled with Clawson saying he only wanted to find someone in the portal who could play for 1 year, makes it seem like we are really counting on this guy to be the QB of the future. He played on a loaded Walton team that has 7 seniors going D1 next year. This weekend at the All-star game, he was described as a "high floor guy" it just makes me wonder if we are already seeing his ceiling.
 
TimmyClutch said:
To me, his age, size and lack of other P5 offers is concerning. This coupled with Clawson saying he only wanted to find someone in the portal who could play for 1 year, makes it seem like we are really counting on this guy to be the QB of the future. He played on a loaded Walton team that has 7 seniors going D1 next year. This weekend at the All-star game, he was described as a "high floor guy" it just makes me wonder if we are already seeing his ceiling.
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I understand what you’re saying, I just think it’s really premature to say that a kid may have hit their ceiling before they’ve even had a college practice.

QB is going to be a year to year position moving forward regardless. If Hecklinski doesn’t show improvement and show that he’s on track to earn the starting job, I’m sure Clawson will be back in the portal for 2025.
 
Admit to being completely ignorant about HS football recruiting other than perusing rankings made by guys that don't have the ability and/or resume' to coach college football, but it has been reported that Hecklinski had several P5 schools interested, and they would have offered had he not made it clear that he was 100% committed to WF, despite blowing up his senior year. Schools will not offer a committed player unless they have some indication that the recruit is open to further recruiting (in-home visits and on campus visits). Hecklinski was always rock-solid to WF; see that as a positive, maybe others do not. Getting an invite to the national all-star game was a positive sign about how he was evaluated.

Also, while college football is portal insane, the QB position is the most portal insane. Would guess that more than half the starting QBs next year in FBS will be from the portal rather than HS recruiting. So, if after Spring practice, fall practice and next season, if the staff has any doubts about Hecklinski, WF will look at the portal to augment the QB room.

Did not like the like Bachmeier commit (based on his regression at Boise and his struggles at LA Tech); others that spend more time on evals claim that Bachmeier had no help at LA Tech and did better than the results indicate. We shall see. Not going to begin to pretend that I can evaluate Bachmeier versus a QB from New Hampshire versus a QB from Holy Cross versus an injured QB from Ohio. Would be fooling myself to start claiming that I know that Kurtis Roarke or Max Brosmer will be better than Bachmeier. That said, we all know the names now; so, if Bachmeier blows and these other guys excel, there will be plenty of ammo to attack the staff for their QB evals this past off-season (as there was this past season). That said, will root for Bachmeier, Kern and Hecklinski to succeed next year.
 
deacon14 said:
I understand what you’re saying, I just think it’s really premature to say that a kid may have hit their ceiling before they’ve even had a college practice.

QB is going to be a year to year position moving forward regardless. If Hecklinski doesn’t show improvement and show that he’s on track to earn the starting job, I’m sure Clawson will be back in the portal for 2025.
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I think the second part is where we disagree. Hecklinski is very unlikely to get any game time this year, so he will probably be a total unknown going into the 2025 season (when he will legally able to buy beer after the game). How is that going to be evaluated, the same way it was with Griffis? Previously, Clawson has shown that he is content with seeing how guys perform in practice before starting them. He didn't bring in competition for Griffis despite him being unproven and was even reluctant to replace Griffis with Kern (remember all the quotes how Ken is a "great guy"). Clawson seems to have a plan at QB and is disinclined to diverge from it. Considering the importance that Clawson puts on learning the playbook and how long it takes for his QBs to do learn it (Gilliam and Marucci both hadn't mastered yet it according to Clawson), I am curious how much of an opportunity Bachmeir has to start this season, unless Kern really is not the answer.
 
I wonder if Clawson might rethink any of his prior approaches or if he will keep doing the same thing he’s always done.
 
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