The reinvention of Wake Forest: How high can the Demon Deacons climb?
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Grandma’s Bed and Breakfast, that was the inspiration. Of course it was. Jamie Newman could not have adhered to such a strict diet, and his Wake Forest offense could not have taken off the way it has this season, without some help from the culinary hospitality of a woman named Susie Bigelow who lives less than an hour away from campus.
“Doesn’t matter who it is, whether it’s my friends or just anybody that comes by the house,” Newman says of his grandmother’s cooking. “She makes a great chicken pie, and she also taught me how to cook salmon and broccoli. And that’s one of her favorite meals, and that’s why it’s passed down to me as one of my favorite meals, as well.”
It is eggs and bacon with a little bit of yogurt for breakfast for Chef Newman. It is broccoli, spinach, potatoes and some kind of meat for lunch or dinner. Gone are the fried foods when dining out; in is Chipotle. When he is feeling extra chipper, he will surprise a roommate and cook shrimp. He always takes care of his offensive line, of course, but that usually comes at Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar or another local haunt.
No. 25 Wake Forest is 6-1 and bowl-bound for a school-record fourth consecutive season. It has spent time in the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2008. The Demon Deacons’ offense, once the benchmark for national futility, ranks sixth in the country in total yards. Wake’s facilities, once the butt of jokes in the ACC, sit in the league’s upper tier after a summer upgrade.
Newman, who missed Wake’s first win over Florida State in eight years last Saturday because of a left shoulder injury, is a top-10 passer. His replacement, Sam Hartman, has amassed 527 yards from scrimmage, three touchdowns and zero turnovers in the past game and a half.
No one is mistaking these guys for Clemson; a 62-59 loss to rebuilding Louisville two weeks ago crystallized the slim margin for error at a place like Wake. Yet no one may be better positioned at the present moment for filling the sizable gap below the Tigers in the ACC, with a possible Orange Bowl bid up for grabs.
In six seasons under coach Dave Clawson, the Deacs have gone from doormat to dependable. Can they go from good to great?
“I think to ever present to our players that the goal is anything less than winning the ACC and getting to the College Football Playoff, we’re selling the whole thing short,” Clawson says. “But at the same time, we recognize the challenge that is and (how) high that mountain is in our conference, because of the level of program that Clemson has.”
By now, everyone knows that this is Clawson’s forte: Step into a rebuilding program — be it Fordham, Richmond or Bowling Green — renovate it from the ground up and bear the fruits of that labor a few years down the road in the form of a conference championship. It sounds neat enough. And through consecutive 3-9 campaigns at the start of his tenure, Clawson put on a pretty face publicly and insisted that he knew exactly what he had gotten himself into.
But that does not make defeat — or, more directly, the prospect of defeat staring at you from every which way — any easier to swallow. Wake Forest had to play its “A” game every week in 2014 and ’15. If its opponent played its “D” game, perhaps the Deacs could steal a game or two.
“You always think you’re ready to do it again, and then when you’re in the middle of it … ” Clawson says, his voice trailing off.
“I mean, you have trouble sleeping, and if you’re competitive it bothers you, and that feeling in your stomach every Saturday after you lose is awful. And I felt that way. And yet I have a whole staff and a whole team that I’ve got to try to (lead). So, I’m glad I have a good marriage, and I can kind of vent with my wife a little bit. I run, so those runs got faster, and there’s a lot more anxiety to get rid of during those runs. And you just try not to lose sight of what you’re trying to build. But it’s not easy. It was hard. It’s really hard.”
Going into Tallahassee in 2014 armed with freshmen offensive linemen against the defending national champs and their team of All-Americans made Clawson question how his guys would ever get a first down.
And yet, in some ways, that was more digestible than some of the early-season tests.
“Even like the FCS games, I mean, we were as nerved-up as you can be, because you’re saying: If you don’t get this one …” Clawson says. “Those games were a lot of pressure. Because you knew what was ahead of you.”
No one has experienced this all in quite the manner that Justin Herron has. Now in his sixth season, Herron, Wake’s starting left tackle, is a month shy of his 24th birthday. He became a Deac when it was not exactly cool to become a Deac, and as he redshirted during the misery of that 2014 campaign, the same thought crossed his mind: If I’m not even good enough to play on this team, just how bad am I?
Everything has changed since then, from the building he conducts this interview in, to the practice field he came off earlier in the morning, to the caliber of players he sees entering the program as freshmen.
And yet, there is one prevalent theme above all.
“The biggest difference is that we have so many players that love football,” Herron says. “In 2014, we had players that love football, but I felt that there are a lot of players that didn’t love playing, that didn’t love the sport.
“In 2014, I’d be the only one watching tape. So like, 8 o’clock at night, I’d be the only one in the whole entire facility. Now, there’s times where I’m leaving and Sam Hartman or Jamie Newman will be like: ‘Where you going, Justin? I thought you’re gonna stay late.’ So it’s funny, because I always remember how I was always the last one to leave. And now I’m not always the last one to leave. So it’s always a good feeling to see people doing something to get better. And then when you can look out over the balcony and look at the indoor, there’s someone always in there working, when it never used to be like that.”
Saturday marked the second-earliest date that Wake has clinched bowl eligibility, trailing just the charmed 2006 outfit that won the ACC. That team, coached by Jim Grobe, showed that this place can succeed. Most other seasons before and afterward have shown that the program could not sustain that success.
But there has never been the kind of university support that there is now, and there has never been someone continuing to fight for even more of it the way that Clawson is. He never tires of this dance. He ultimately wants to be able to provide what any other school provides. His differentiator, of course, is Wake’s personal touch, given its status as the nation’s smallest Power 5 school.
“There’s a point that you love figuring out the best way to beat a zone blitz, or the best way to beat man coverage,” Clawson says. “And I think, the longer I’ve been a head coach, it’s like, putting the pieces of the puzzle together programmatically is as part of my job. It’s not just coaching the team week to week, but having a vision of what you want the program to look like, and what’s going to help you take the next step.”
Even with Newman sidelined this past weekend, the Deacs improved to 6-1 dating back to last season in their past seven games decided by one score.
“We’ve got 20 players (on the two-deep) that are playing as fourth- or fifth-year guys,” says Sage Surratt, the nation’s second-leading receiver with 881 yards. “Guys have experience in situations. And just being able to have football awareness in the crucial situations we’ve had, it’s a testament to our coaching staff doing a great job preparing us.”
Crazy enough, this is all that the Deacs’ quarterback knows. Newman is only a redshirt junior, which means he is associated only with a Wake Forest program that goes bowling every year. He has only been putting his stamp on the kitchen since his sophomore year, when he prepared to move off campus and make do without a meal plan.
Thus, he enlisted the help of Grandma, whom he had lived with since fifth grade.
“It’s definitely like a trial-and-error thing,” Newman says. “You can watch somebody do it, but the more you try to do it and test out different things that you like, that’s how it comes about.”
His coach is a devoted foodie, but Newman has not worked up the nerve to test his cooking chops on Clawson just yet. Clawson waited tables out of college, and it does not take much to get him going on famed restaurants such as Denmark’s Noma, where he reserved a table six months in advance of his family’s trip there last summer.
“Incredible,” Clawson says. “I mean, that was like a vacation in and of itself. And we still talk about it.”
Be it through home cooking or some international flavor, Wake is a program that wears many hats. And for the first real extended period of time in a long time, the Deacs have the nation talking about them, too.
