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16 close losses since the Orange Bowl

RedSoxFaithful said:
Furthermore, this idea that we're an overmatched team who should never have a chance against more reputable programs (and I'm talking specifically about this year) is bullshit.

I'm sick of the "Before the season, would you have taken a 6-6 record?" counterargument. Of course I would have. But we would have been operating under incomplete information. Had I known then what I know now about this team, no, I wouldn't have been happy with that. It's the same thing as the fans who are excusing yesterday's loss as having played the #9 team in the country close. We were capable of beating them, and frankly, we're capable of being the #9 team in the country in a given year.

This is a really talented football team, and a combination of poor coaching and lack of opportunism (from an execution standpoint) have seen them underachieve by a couple of games. Jim Grobe turning around our program doesn't make him immune from the criticism that he's currently holding it back. Which, in some respects, he is.

I said it yesterday in the game thread, mostly jokingly: There's a Samsung Galaxy S II commercial that proclaims that nobody wants to be "almost" remembered. Why are we content with that? Why should we be content with that? The LOWF mentality is self-fulfilling. Expect more.
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almost none of this is correct. congrats.
 
Milhouse said:
almost none of this is correct. congrats.
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If you honestly believe that Grobe and Co.'s in-game coaching has been optimal throughout this season, I don't know what else to say.

It has cost us games. Period. I'm not saying we should replace him (in fact, my direct quote was that we shouldn't replace him), but it's not a mortal sin to question him.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
If you honestly believe that Grobe and Co.'s in-game coaching has been optimal throughout this season, I don't know what else to say.

It has cost us games. Period. I'm not saying we should replace him (in fact, my direct quote was that we shouldn't replace him), but it's not a mortal sin to question him.
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I agree that the in-game coaching could use work, but without the current coaching staff, we wouldn't be here in the first place. Hard to argue against that too.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
I agree that the in-game coaching could use work, but without the current coaching staff, we wouldn't be here in the first place. Hard to argue against that too.
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I never argued against that. Grobe deserves all the credit in the world for turning around the program.
 
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RedSoxFaithful said:
I never argued against that. Grobe deserves all the credit in the world for turning around the program. It's been stagnating for a while now, though.
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I just disagree with that. It always hurts to lose close like yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I was infuriated that we lost in the manner that we did, but I was happy as hell to be in the game, because I didn't expect it at all.

I don't know how you can argue that we are stagnating when we have improved from last year by 2 games (soon to be 3-4 hopefully), and are setting ourselves up fora legitimate run next year at the conference title game.

Hell we almost made it this year, and most would say that we are a year shy of making it to that point.
 
Yeah, I realized afterward that "stagnation" was probably overstating it.
 
diverdeac said:
2007
Nebraska (Marion TD drop/Refs screwed us on the last play when Kenny Moore was held on 4th down throw inside their terriotory)

UVA (Swank misses a long Field goal. We should have run one more play to get closer. Bad coaching decision.)


2008

Navy - Aliens replaced Rile Skinner's brain that game.
Miami - Grobe pissed about not running the ball the week before lined up in the I and ran it 50 times, dinging up both of our backs and after the game Miami players said they knew exactly what we were going to run.

2009

Navy (sat on the ball at the end of the half at midfield in a torrential down pour/bad coaching decision)
Miami - Brown punt fumble coupled with seemingly a dozen chances to stop them. PLus totally fucked by the refs on the most egregous holding call on a run play. That one call cost us the game and I'm still pissed.

BC - Riley fumbles in OT after great comeback at 1. Sure win pissed away.

Tech - was really good. We had them on the ropes but simply could not stop them. I would have gone for it on 4th and 12 from their 35 with 50 seconds left and given Riley a chance to win it. No way we were going to stop them in ot. but we punted. we sat on the lead at the end of that game.
Baylor - just came up short on last drive against Griffin III in a great game.


I would say some different decisions and maybe the refs not screwing us would have flipped about 1/2 of those.

Duke - on the win side. Gee - I try not to even think about it
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*Good assessment. Notes I would add were the obvious lightning near the Navy stadium in 2009 at halftime. If the correct call is made and they delay the game an hour or two - we win since the rain stopped and Navy had a clear advantage in the rain. Once it stopped - we moved the ball.

Also, Baylor the coaches blitzed Woodlief late on 3rd and 5 and he whiffed on the tackle. About a week later, coaches inserted our leading tackler, Midgett, into the game. They assessed he was not good enough to start or really even play vs. Baylor.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
Furthermore, this idea that we're an overmatched team who should never have a chance against more reputable programs (and I'm talking specifically about this year) is bullshit.

I'm sick of the "Before the season, would you have taken a 6-6 record?" counterargument. Of course I would have. But we would have been operating under incomplete information. Had I known then what I know now about this team, no, I wouldn't have been happy with that. It's the same thing as the fans who are excusing yesterday's loss as having played the #9 team in the country close. We were capable of beating them, and frankly, we're capable of being the #9 team in the country in a given year.

This is a really talented football team, and a combination of poor coaching and lack of opportunism (from an execution standpoint) have seen them underachieve by a couple of games. Jim Grobe turning around our program doesn't make him immune from the criticism that he's currently holding it back. Which, in some respects, he is.

I said it yesterday in the game thread, mostly jokingly: There's a Samsung Galaxy S II commercial that proclaims that nobody wants to be "almost" remembered. Why are we content with that? Why should we be content with that? The LOWF mentality is self-fulfilling. Expect more.
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A few thoughts-

I agree that the comment "Well if I knew were going to be 6-6 I would have taken it..." is misleading. You don't know what you have in a football team untill you start playing and see how you perform as the season goes on. Expectations are often raised or lowered as the season progressed. Ours clearly went way up after the FSU win but have since come down.

Our coaching staff makes decisions and they don't always turn out correctly, nor do our players always execute what they're supposed to. That's the case at every school in the NCAA's. The difference is when you have very talented players ie schools like Clemson, Va Tech, etc. the players tend to execute more often and a mistake by the coaching staff is not as magnified. That's not LOWF, thats just the reality of college sports, particularly college football.

Grobe and Co. have raised this program. We've gone from a program that could not compete with hardly anyone but Duke an occasionally Army to where we're competitive most games and have been able to win big games. Ideally, the next coach we hired takes us to the next level but right now we've come a long way from where we are. Hopefully we're able to sustain that success but it won't be easy that's for sure.
 
keeper said:
Absolutely. Kickers. Practice players.
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Yeah, the big schools have better 19-year old tackling dummies than Wake. BFD Every BCS school uses scholarships on kickers, including Wake. Wake hasn't been caught in a situation where we used a walkon kicker in a game that I can remember. And if we were, it was just an extension of how bad the team was.
 
bobknightfan said:
If we are going to use a conservative streategy like the one coach Grobe prefers....and there is nothing inherently wrong with that....it is absolutely necessary to have not just a good, but a great kicking game. Everyone talks about Riley Skinner when they remember the 2006 season....but there is no way we would have won several of the games we won that year without Sam Swank.

Now we have a place kicker who is basically useless beyond 35 yards. As much as anything, that probably cost us a chance to play for the conference championship last Saturday.
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It's not just the place kicker. It's all 11 positions on offense, all 11 positions on defense, and the punter. Let me rephrase your point:

If we're going to play conservatively, we'd better have a . . .

-great punter
-consistent ball control offense that can get us in short field goal range
-good defense that doesn't implode in the fourth quarter and give up a 10-yard cushion

Sure, it's great to have a top kicker, but it's truly a luxury in college football, not something you can build your team around when you're recruiting.
 
HeavyPetter said:
It's not just the place kicker. It's all 11 positions on offense, all 11 positions on defense, and the punter. Let me rephrase your point:

If we're going to play conservatively, we'd better have a . . .

-great punter
-consistent ball control offense that can get us in short field goal range-good defense that doesn't implode in the fourth quarter and give up a 10-yard cushion

Sure, it's great to have a top kicker, but it's truly a luxury in college football, not something you can build your team around when you're recruiting.
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And a first down or two late in the fourth quarter while protecting leads.
 
Buttermaker said:
And a first down or two late in the fourth quarter while protecting leads.
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Right, so a big o-line that has enough depth to stay fresh and grind it out in the 4th. Also at least 2-3 good running backs to do the same thing (or one workhorse that doesn't fumble).

So basically, we need everything else any other team would like to have in order to succeed and win close games.
 
The team in 2007 was better than the orange bowl team. Other than the orange bowl year the team has not closed out close games. 80% of wake fans expect Wake to lose a close game in the 4th quarter except against Duke. Duke sucks.

Wake should have done better and 2007 and 2009 and 2010.

Grobe deserves all the credit in the world for raising the bar and all he has done.

He has brought in some great talent and I am thrilled with the Bowl games and the bowl game we will go to this year.

He has had wake within 2 plays of 3 division titles not bad at all.

But I dont see how you can defend the 4th quarter coaching. It has not been good at all, it is the Dave Odom hold on for dear life scheme. I dont want a new coach, but Wake is not getting 2 million dollars worth of coaching in the 4th quarter.
 
Goolsbyrules said:
The team in 2007 was better than the orange bowl team. Other than the orange bowl year the team has not closed out close games. 80% of wake fans expect Wake to lose a close game in the 4th quarter except against Duke. Duke sucks.

Wake should have done better and 2007 and 2009 and 2010.

Grobe deserves all the credit in the world for raising the bar and all he has done.
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Wake's defense was horrible last year and we had a freshman quarterback. We were destined to be horrible last year and we were. Holding on for last second home wins agains Georgia Tech and Navy wouldn't have made us any less awful.
 
bobknightfan said:
We could have replaced one player last Saturday and won the game: Swank for Newman.
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So are you faulting the coaches for not recruiting a better kicker than Newman? That's intellectually lazy. Do you really think they didn't get the best kicker they could sign?

They also probably would have won if they had recruited a monster defensive end, like the kind they have at Alabama and LSU, or a couple of huge offensive linemen like they have at Wisconsin and Ohio State.

We might have won if we had Plackameier too, but the coaches have to work with the players they can bring in. It's not like we can dangle a hube free agent signing bonus in front of them.
 
Goolsbyrules said:
But I dont see how you can defend the 4th quarter coaching. It has not been good at all, it is the Dave Odom hold on for dear life scheme. I dont want a new coach, but Wake is not getting 2 million dollars worth of coaching in the 4th quarter.
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What do you think should happen? Grobe's pay be cut? Force him to fire assistants? Restructure his contract? OR just hope for better?
 
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