The program turned for the worse when the staff failed to capitalize on the 2006 to 2008 success when WF football had momentum and credibility as perhaps the best private school BCS program. At that time, WF was more successful than Stanford (yes, Stanford), Northwestern, Baylor and miles ahead of Vandy. WF won every recruiting battle with Vandy and even some with the biggest BCS schools. Then, a series of problems created catastrophic issues at the OL, and WF football has never recovered.
First was a series of recruiting misses at OL. Among them, WF was within a bee's dick of landing OG Jonathan Cooper (WF lost him to UNC at the very end - All American; 2013 1st round draft pick Arizona Cardinals), OC Khahil Wilkes (WF thought they had him; committed to Stanford on signing day; WF stopped recruiting in NJ after this; Wilkes is the starting center at Stanford); OT Robbie Havenstein (WF led until Wisconsin nabbed him at the end; RS junior is a 2 year starter at Wisconsin, and projects as a high NFL pick). Everyone knows about the James Wilson saga at Florida (Florida refused to allow him to transfer to WF). There have been other OL losses: Ben Freeman (son of a WF player) to Clemson; David Yankey OL from GA to Stanford; Shane Johnson to Pitt (2 year starter). WF was even involved with the Kouandjio brothers from MD that now start at Bama, and will be in the NFL next year. Had WF landed any combination of this group, the team's performance would have been materially different.
On top of the recruiting misses, WF has suffered a ton of injuries to the players it did land. The best OL that WF has recruited and landed over the last 5 years, Colin Summers is out for the year (possibly ever) with blood clotting problems. Dylan Heartsill's bad back ended his career. Antonio Ford broke his leg, and is still not 100%. Steven Chase tore his ACL. Devin Bolling was arrested and kicked out of school. As a result, the OL has been a mess for the last 4 years. During that time, WF has been young, inexperienced and not talented on the OL. A bad combination. Crappy OL play makes it impossible to run and to throw deep. So, WF runs the dink and dunk offense with little success.
WF will not fire Grobe, and I doubt that he will be forced to fire his assistants. With that I said, I sense Grobe is close to retiring. Not sure if it will happen after this year or next, but I will be shocked if he finishes out his contract (2016). Agree that Grobe made the job better than it was before he started, but the past 2 years have been hard on WF's rep. Recruiting will be the key. For the same reasons that Stanford, Baylor, NW and Vandy (and even Duke) have found recent success, WF can be a winning program, but the margin for error is minuscule. WF just has not been able to recover from the close recruiting misses and the injuries/attrition that WF has suffered on the OL.
