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Wake Forest Football Recruiting

There’s a LOT of different metrics to grade offense/defense, as you know, but Wake had the 19th rated scoring offense in College Football last season. The only P5 teams ahead of them who weren’t in the T25 to end the year... Arizona State and Ole Miss.

Wake total defense rating - 90th
Arizona State total defense rating - 91st
Ole Miss total defense rating - 126th (woof)

I’m not one of those who believes we should fire Hemphill or anything, but it is fair to place a majority of “blame” on the defense. They have potential to get better, we saw that in 2nd half UVA, VT, and most of Wisconsin this year. I think they will take a step in the right direction with the returning production next season, same with the offense.

There’s obviously room for the offense to stay efficient late in games which was a problem under Jamie and Sam. That is 100% an issue, but when your offense goes cold and your defense can’t buy a stop for the 3Q/4Q, that’s also a problem. It’s not like opposing teams were getting good field position, hell we had 1 INT all year up until 3Q of Wisconsin. The offense is playing catch-up or match it with opposing offenses much more than the defense is having to carry games to keep us in them.
 
deacon22 said:
There’s a LOT of different metrics to grade offense/defense, as you know, but Wake had the 19th rated scoring offense in College Football last season. The only P5 teams ahead of them who weren’t in the T25 to end the year... Arizona State and Ole Miss.

Wake total defense rating - 90th
Arizona State total defense rating - 91st
Ole Miss total defense rating - 126th (woof)

I’m not one of those who believes we should fire Hemphill or anything, but it is fair to place a majority of “blame” on the defense. They have potential to get better, we saw that in 2nd half UVA, VT, and most of Wisconsin this year. I think they will take a step in the right direction with the returning production next season, same with the offense.

There’s obviously room for the offense to stay efficient late in games which was a problem under Jamie and Sam. That is 100% an issue, but when your offense goes cold and your defense can’t buy a stop for the 3Q/4Q, that’s also a problem. It’s not like opposing teams were getting good field position, hell we had 1 INT all year up until 3Q of Wisconsin. The offense is playing catch-up or match it with opposing offenses much more than the defense is having to carry games to keep us in them.
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*gives metric that says the scoring was there but unsustainable given how they operated last year* "look at all the points the offense put up!"

There was a reason SP+ and EPA pretty much said all year the Wake offense wasn't as good as the scoring and yards said and well it wasn't just late game, overall they just weren't an efficient team. But you also dont have to give people short fields to fuck a defense, especially one as short handed as Wake's was last year. And when healthy the defense had it's short comings! They got beat underneath a ton and the front line had issues finishing tackles and that shouldn't be lost! But again, I think it's horrible process to see that by every measure of efficiency Wake's offense wasn't(while it was pretty much injury free all year) and prop them up like most do and put most if not all the blame on the side of the ball that consistently just wasn't healthy and by admission of their own coordinator put in bad positions all year to cover up not having enough bodies
 
Being a bad defense can be due to lack of depth, injuries, being put in bad position, etc. That’s definitely a factor that cannot be overlooked, but healthy or not, being bad is being bad. I agree with you that they can be good enough if healthy, that’s why I have confidence in them turning it around this season. I’m not here saying we need all new LBs or a new DC, I’m just saying the defense wasn’t good for a majority of the season and yes, this was due to many many factors. If they can get to somewhere around 55-70 in total defense, I think that’s a huge improvement. We will never be a great defensive team due to the up-tempo high scoring offense and that’s fine, but let’s be average or above average at least. I think we will get there.
 
deacon22 said:
It’s incredibly hard to be a successful coach in any D1 sport without being somewhat of a “dick”. I’m sure some of the stuff he’s done can be considered petty, but he runs a program that doesn’t overcruit, doesn’t make false promises to players/families, etc. Those are the types of things that “dick” coaches do. We also have quite a few younger brothers of current players committed to Wake. Every situation is different, but I’d say if Clawson was running a toxic program our current players wouldn’t be in younger brothers/former teammates ears on coming to Wake.
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Hopefully another in Tate Carney next year
 
Cam, man, I really like what you bring to the boards, but the defense has been objectively bad for a few years now despite some individual talent

whether it's lack of talent or injuries or what, it is bad

full stop
 
To get this back to recruiting, looks like Wake announced only Horatio Fields as an official signee.

What is the story with the transfers (grad and other) who have verbally (or tweeted) that they were coming to Wake? Is there some date when they will officially sign and transmit a document that commits them to Wake and Wake to them? Or is it when they enroll in school, either January (already happened?) or after the end of the school year in May?
 
Deaconblue said:
To get this back to recruiting, looks like Wake announced only Horatio Fields as an official signee.

What is the story with the transfers (grad and other) who have verbally (or tweeted) that they were coming to Wake? Is there some date when they will officially sign and transmit a document that commits them to Wake and Wake to them? Or is it when they enroll in school, either January (already happened?) or after the end of the school year in May?
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Vilain and Wingfield June

Turner and washington are on campus
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
Cam, man, I really like what you bring to the boards, but the defense has been objectively bad for a few years now despite some individual talent

whether it's lack of talent or injuries or what, it is bad

full stop
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and again I'll take the word and eyes of players, coaches, and people who compile data both associated with and not with Wake against fans who point and say "yards and points" when every advanced statistic has said outside of the first few games of 2018(before Sawvel got fired) The offense hasn't been as good as fans think it is and the defense hasn't been as bad as fans think it is
 
"not as bad as fans think" is still bad

I did some digging to try to find some advance metrics to support your claim, and I couldn't find anything that showed Deacs weren't low end for Power 5 teams and, at best, middle of the pack for all D1 teams for 2018, 2019, or 2020

I found this, for example: https://cfb-graphs.com/leaderboard20.html
 
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CamLemons said:
and again I'll take the word and eyes of players, coaches, and people who compile data both associated with and not with Wake against fans who point and say "yards and points" when every advanced statistic has said outside of the first few games of 2018(before Sawvel got fired) The offense hasn't been as good as fans think it is and the defense hasn't been as bad as fans think it is
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LOL - The offense which returned only 2 starters from the 2019 season finished 19th in the nation in scoring offense and 28th in the nation in total offense?

What about the defense (aka the strength of the team in the offseason) which returned 10 starters (albeit decimated by injuries at safety) yet finished a whopping 91st in the nation in scoring defense and 90th in the nation in total defense?

Trot out all the advanced analytics you wish, the bolded claim above is an absolute joke.
 
I get that the offense's propensity for three-and-outs and otherwise short drives puts stress on the defense and leads to more plays faced, more points and yards given up, etc.

but I'm looking at lots of rate stats and advanced metrics and I can't find one where the Deacs are top 40 in the NCAA in any team defense metrics in the last three years
 
Looking at scoring and total offense doesn't really tell the whole story because we run an incredible number plays have an incredible number of drives. Looking at yards per play offense and defensive both mediocre.
 
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The one thing that makes our task more difficult is explosive plays. Our offense does not produce a lot in explosive plays while our defense gives up a lot of explosive plays (this is obviously a generalization). This mostly has nothing to do with size but SPEED has a lot to do with it, basically we need more speed on both sides of the ball.
 
sportsnut1 said:
The one thing that makes our task more difficult is explosive plays. Our offense does not produce a lot in explosive plays while our defense gives up a lot of explosive plays (this is obviously a generalization). This mostly has nothing to do with size but SPEED has a lot to do with it, basically we need more speed on both sides of the ball.
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I actually think our offense generates plenty of explosive plays. But we have far too many 3 and out drives that burn 1 minute of game time. We never seem to be able to sustain drives where we gain yards consistently. So we are either scoring or punting very quickly.
 
WRS said:
I actually think our offense generates plenty of explosive plays. But we have far too many 3 and out drives that burn 1 minute of game time. We never seem to be able to sustain drives where we gain yards consistently. So we are either scoring or punting very quickly.
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I’m ok with scoring quickly.
I’m not ok with punting quickly.
 
Saw a blip in the WSJ on area high school athletes expected to sign next Wed. An OL from Regan High is expected to be a PWO at Wake.
 
raldeac said:
Saw a blip in the WSJ on area high school athletes expected to sign next Wed. An OL from Regan High is expected to be a PWO at Wake.
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Wrong thread, but 2 Reagan baseball seniors are Wake commits. One is a dominant LHP who's been ranked as the top lefty in the class...likely won't get to WFU
 
Isaiah Isaac to the portal smh are we going to have any depth
 
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