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Back to the Future: Wake Forest returns to LB U

Julian Thomas Jackson has impressive film but even more impressive SR stats in Dothan, Alabama. They love some football in Dothan, Alabama./ Sr - 141 tackles, 27 TL's and good number of sacks -- I'll have to look it up. Guy is long bodied, excellent balance and speed and made plays everywhere on the field.

What you look for in recruiting (early Mack Brown @ UNC) is athletic prowess...first and foremost. That is where the Deacons have switched.

2nd thing, is the guy a team player and can he stay in school. Smart coaches try not to recruit cancer nor academic casualties. You can have a guy who struggles but wants to achieve -- and that guy gets total support.

Next, you have to recruit guys who put up numbers. If you have the initial criteria of the above and you add numbers...then you have the makings of a standout prospect who you can comfortably hype...I mean look at all the hype masters and their 5 star duds...you never see them get taken to task -- take Clemsons 5 Star Everything and overloaded with hype, Tony Steward and note how ex Wake Forest recruit and sleeper deluxe, Spencer Shuey took Steward's starting position in 2012. I mean that happens a whole bunch -- so stop wearing me out for hyping some Wake Forest guys when it's based on long time observation and genuine enthusiasm.

Oh,and ps., you ain't never had a group of fuggin bad Backers and Ends as you right now...:)
 
More power to us on a kid like Ali Lamot. It doesn't matter when you get him. I wouldn't put much into a media guide listing of 6'2 and 200. That's how big he was when he finished 7th in the state in the 110m hurdles.

This coach has had a good history with track guys starting with Barclay and moving through Gattis, Adams, Ghee, Idlette, etc., all primarily track oriented athletes who became footballers.

Our guys identified Lamot as a LB prospect in the mold of James Adams but it has since become clear that he's going be a big guy.

This is an example of recruiting the "athlete" above all else -- it doesn't hurt things that Ali has a genuine reputation for photographic memory. Me likey this prospect particularly since he goes about 6'4 and 240.
 
I shit you not, I had a dream that Lobo was fired and Wellman replaced him with Jeff [Redacted]. It was a disaster. [Redacted] got thrown out of game and as he was walking off the field, he was flipping double birds up at all the WFU fans.

Man, he and Wellman are even assholes in my subconscious.
 
I'd rather read in-depth analysis that obviously but enthusiastically over-hypes our players leading up to a new season than read vague pessimism and negativity about how we should have fired our coach last year but didn't and how guys who haven't even laced up their shoes for Wake yet are going to suck.

That's what epitomizes LOWF to me. Every school has Lectro's. Not every school dismisses conference championships as flukes, calls bowl years total failures, and approaches every year expecting disaster.

I realize last year was a disappointment. We have a lot of players who should be fun to watch this year. It'd be nice to have a Lectro thread where we don't feel the need to argue down every positive post, over-zealous though it may be.
 
What has changed in our player developement over the years? Are we turning athletes into players, or making the players we have stronger/faster? Is it some of both? I always thought the most important thing that many times is overlooked in a recruit is character (Ask Urban about that).
 
DCDeac said:
I'd rather read in-depth analysis that obviously but enthusiastically over-hypes our players leading up to a new season than read vague pessimism and negativity about how we should have fired our coach last year but didn't and how guys who haven't even laced up their shoes for Wake yet are going to suck.

That's what epitomizes LOWF to me. Every school has Lectro's. Not every school dismisses conference championships as flukes, calls bowl years total failures, and approaches every year expecting disaster.

I realize last year was a disappointment. We have a lot of players who should be fun to watch this year. It'd be nice to have a Lectro thread where we don't feel the need to argue down every positive post, over-zealous though it may be.
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I was at the BC game in '09, when Riley screwed-up the comeback. That one play cost us a bowl game. We would have gone to SF to play USC (Pete Carrol's last game), instead of BC. One play,one game one season. We are too critical on both ends.
 
DEACS76 said:
I was at the BC game in '09, when Riley screwed-up the comeback. That one play cost us a bowl game. We would have gone to SF to play USC (Pete Carrol's last game), instead of BC. One play,one game one season. We are too critical on both ends.
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Ugh. I was there as well. Easily one of the worst endings I've ever seen in person. What made it so bad was we had clinched extending OT with a chip shot even if we hadn't gotten it in the endzone. Btw I thought the RB ran to the wrong side - not that Riley screwed up the play. He was clutch as hell in that game.
 
I'm something below the level of a fan of Lectro and well-above the level of a hater. I generally enjoy reading his posts. But the truth is, there is more flash than substance over the past 4 years.

This year will be interesting. Lectro told us that the Intermann-Preble-Goodwin class was a sea-change class for us in terms of OL recruiting. If that is the case, we should have an effective OL this year. If not...
 
OT was the only time in the BC game we used that formation. Only time we ran the play. I don't remember seeing that formation the rest of the season. Some posters said the heard the players had barely run that play in practice.

We didn't have a bread and butter play to go to in that situation. That's on the coaches.

I just want to see good football. I don't care how. Stellar defense and special teams? Great. Pass it 60 times? Great. If I don't see good football, I'm going to talk about it.
 
Our close game strategy didn't work out too well in 2009 or 2010.
 
DEACS76 said:
What has changed in our player developement over the years? Are we turning athletes into players, or making the players we have stronger/faster? Is it some of both? I always thought the most important thing that many times is overlooked in a recruit is character (Ask Urban about that).
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We didn't,by staff admission,continue recruiting raw athletes and then turning them into football players -- same way a Mack Brown would take a 2 star LB (24th rated player in the state) like Brian Simmons and see him transform from a 6'2
and 200 pound athlete into 248 pound All Pro LB.

Look at Aaron Curry coming back giving clinics and speaking to the players. That's a good sign. Embracing the philosophy of "the eye" over the product of a football school. Player potential over program-pipeline. It worked somewhat at Pahokee and those guys ain't done...but we leaned too heavily on that and the Coach has admitted as much.

Note the new guys -- the awesome late addition of Warren Belin -- here and excited to train these kids! Hot Damn, that is cause for enthusiasm working with these guys and adding young dudes like Jaboree for 2014.
 
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Go for it Lectro..............Don't stop writing.

to the doubters......of course we're going to be optimistic, maybe overly so, at this point of the season, just a like a coach would be and just like the players should be.
The sky's the limit for now.

I never met a successful pessimist.
Onward............
 
The truth is somewhere in between- the fact is you can't live on recruiting only "diamonds in the rough". While stars don't mean anything size and speed do. Grobe went and recruited a lot of guys early on that could really run- he got fortunate some grew and many panned out. Now with the OB long past- no recruit today remembers that- they only see our three losing seasons- Grobe needs to find his energy and get a staff that can recruit, he has not done that. We have not filled holes (RB OL) and we are steadily recruiting guys who are lucky to be all city players with limited upside in size and speed. many of our best recruits have been passed on to us (T Harris) or we got injured players who were 2nd choices (pick your back up untested RB) for bigger programs who passed on them because they could.

Fast forward to this year- a number of our signees were not on recruiting databases, got the WFU bump to two stars from none- and we are striking out on those one would guess were our prime targets. our average score is so far below anyone else's it is unlikely we can sustain our competitiveness if we can't recruit better. Even Army is way ahead of this year average player score wise. I have been living and dying with WF since the Bill Tate days. I know trouble when I see it. We are not a program on the rise- we are going downhill and everyone sees it except those who joined Grobe and quit after the orange Bowl year. No one ever got less of a recruiting bump winning a conference than we did. JG was too busy anointing himself as the man who did more with less and flirted shamelessly with the press just to revel in the glory of having his mane connected to bigger programs thinking I am good forever and I don't have to work anymore. It all begins with recruiting and we are not getting it done. Hell Liberty was a challenge for our athletes. If that is not true and these guys vaguely resemble the al world all pro players Lectro calls forth then our coaching sucks. The truth here, is in the middle as well. The program has lost its energy one way or another we need to get it back. Doing the same old same old won't get it done. Grobe has shown no interest in making changes and has become the dinosaur courting extinction knowing his job is safe no matter what he puts on the field and he is free to hunker down and eat plastic grass wishing he were somewhere else 50 yards form the line of scrimmage. Sometimes I wonder if the players even know he is at the game.

It is not being a hater to worry about what you see. I will make the long trip all the home games, root loudly, go to several away games- Army will be special. I am disillusioned with the product we put on the field and the lack of attention it gets. We should play better football win or lose. And we have not been LBU for quite some time.
 
Dekin said:
Go for it Lectro..............Don't stop writing.

to the doubters......of course we're going to be optimistic, maybe overly so, at this point of the season, just a like a coach would be and just like the players should be.
The sky's the limit for now.

I never met a successful pessimist.
Onward............
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Wow...you play on the team?!?!
 
Last year's class is a top 5 recruiting class in Wake history as far as rankings, numbers, and what the expectations are. We'll see how it pans out.
 
Ball State Deac said:
I shit you not, I had a dream that Lobo was fired and Wellman replaced him with Jeff [Redacted]. It was a disaster. [Redacted] got thrown out of game and as he was walking off the field, he was flipping double birds up at all the WFU fans.

Man, he and Wellman are even assholes in my subconscious.
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This sounds like something from WWE.
 
I can actually agree with this when it comes to football, I’m alright with some preseason hype. Go ahead, sell me, get me excited. In fairness, is PH probably right that Grobe rested on his laurels and got a little lazy, sure. Doesn’t bother me that much, probably because I admittedly don’t care about Wake football as much as PH.

However, this shit doesn’t fly with me when it comes to Wake basketball. I heard Grobe make a bunch of excuses about the difficulty of recruiting for football at a small academic school like Wake, and while I acknowledged them as excuses, I still felt they were probably fairly accurate. In fact I knew it was true and I didn’t even need to hear it from Grobe. But let’s not get confused and think that shit is applicable to the current state of our hoops program (and I know you didn’t say that DC). In fact, I’d bet if our Bball program was in order like it should be (order meaning competitive) then most of us would have felt the same way I originally felt when reading lectro’s post: “Oh shit, our football team might be bring the hammer this year!”

Problem is our Bball program is not in order. So after I read Lectro’s post and then read the responses, immediate skepticism crept in and I adopted Ph’s approach to the situation: total cynicism.

The truth is were probably not that good nor or we that bad. We’ll probably be fairly competitive. But a leader (the AD) generally perceived as shitty creates a shitty pessimistic atmosphere.

TL;DNR (my post not DC's)

DCDeac said:
I'd rather read in-depth analysis that obviously but enthusiastically over-hypes our players leading up to a new season than read vague pessimism and negativity about how we should have fired our coach last year but didn't and how guys who haven't even laced up their shoes for Wake yet are going to suck.

That's what epitomizes LOWF to me. Every school has Lectro's. Not every school dismisses conference championships as flukes, calls bowl years total failures, and approaches every year expecting disaster.

I realize last year was a disappointment. We have a lot of players who should be fun to watch this year. It'd be nice to have a Lectro thread where we don't feel the need to argue down every positive post, over-zealous though it may be.
Click to expand...
 
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