Dan is really writing around the fact that our offense has been poor for Lobo's entire time at Wake. I'm no Kent, so bare with me.
The clearest explanation for what happened to Wake Forest’s football team in 2012 can be found in the ACC statistics for scoring offense.
Right down at the bottom were the Deacons, with a paltry 18.5 points game. No other ACC team averaged fewer than 19.8 and three — Clemson, North Carolina and Florida State — averaged more than twice as many.
“Our offensive production was terrible last year and something had to change, and change drastically,’’ offensive coordinator Steed Lobotzke said Tuesday. “So that’s what we’re doing.’’
[OK, so 18.5 ppg, last in the ACC, and #114 in the nation is the breaking point.]
The proposed solution is to return to the run-oriented, option offense the Deacons used before Riley Skinner showed up as an 11th-hour recruit and ended up rewriting the Wake Forest record book for pretty much every passing category. Coach Jim Grobe said that Deacons fans won’t see anything this season they haven’t seen before.
“It’s the same stuff we were doing with Cory Randolph and Ben Mauk,” Grobe said.
[So the 2005 season is the standard for Wake Forest offense. We averaged 24.5 ppg, 8th in the conference, #71 in the nation. Interesting note: 3 teams scored 18.5 or below in 2005.]
Lobotzke acknowledges the Deacons made the mistake of expecting the same kind of results in 2012 that were enjoyed in 2011. The problem was that other than quarterback Tanner Price and wide receiver Michael Campanaro, the personnel of the 2012 offense bore little resemblance to that of the season before.
“We had a high talent level in our (offensive) line and wide-receiver position in ’11, so we scored a lot of points,” Lobotzke said. “We scored the third-most points (338) in school history.
[Oh so 2011 was a banner year for the offense? 26 ppg, 8th in the ACC, #68 in the nation.]
“And it was all just very conventional — turn around and hand the ball off and drop-back pass. We had good offensive linemen — real old, four seniors and a junior — (plus) Chris Givens on one side, (Michael) Campanaro on the other. So we had a lot of success.
“We tried to do in ’12 with all those linemen gone and Givens gone, and just realized we don’t have the bullets in our gun to be so conventional like that.”
[So the best we can expect under Lobo is 8th in a 12 team conference with an NFL WR and an experienced OL. That's the best we can do?]
...
The goal is to get more production from fewer passes than in 2011, when the Deacons averaged only 5.6 yards per pass attempt and finished last in the ACC with a pass-efficiency rating of 110.1. Price’s hope is that he’ll do more running for yards and less running for his life.
[Dan with the backdoor stat to put the hype in context. Nice work. We had to chuck the ball a lot to move the ball relatively little in 2011.]
“I like it a lot,’’ Price said. “I think it will be really tough for defenses to stop and I think it will be good for our passing game. I think it will open some things up. I’m excited about what we’re doing.
“I’m on board with whatever the coaches want.’’
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What's interesting about last year's 18.5 is that our offensive scoring from 2006-08 wasn't that much better. The official stats in those years were 21.6, 27.9, and 21.0 a game. Of course, the 27.9 included almost a TD per game from defense/special teams.
