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Deac65 said:
I have other questions, why did Carney lead the team in yards per carry, td's by a rb( ithink0 and have less attempts and why did Ellison start over Claiborne and Carney?
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Carney was banged up all year and could not handle more carries.
 
how was dortch mismanaged? newman??

We all knew KWIII was a stud but i think we kinda had a decent season after he left. C’est la vie.

And any assertion that a coach mismanaged a situation implies that the assertor thinks they could have handled it better.

I am pretty certain that the vast majority of people who criticize highly successful people like claswon have never held leadership or management positions themselves and think that every decision that a coach has to make is binary. When you are dealing with 100 18-22 year olds who all think they should be a star, that’s a lot of ego to manage. Rarely is there an obvious answer. Clawson gets it right 95% of the time.
 
Dillon Fence said:
how was dortch mismanaged? newman??

We all knew KWIII was a stud but i think we kinda had a decent season after he left. C’est la vie.

And any assertion that a coach mismanaged a situation implies that the assertor thinks they could have handled it better.

I am pretty certain that the vast majority of people who criticize highly successful people like claswon have never held leadership or management positions themselves and think that every decision that a coach has to make is binary. When you are dealing with 100 18-22 year olds who all think they should be a star, that’s a lot of ego to manage. Rarely is there an obvious answer. Clawson gets it right 95% of the time.
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Newman sat on the bench because he apparently looked bad in practice. He only came in because Sam got hurt and then was obviously better than Sam. Dortch also barely played until his final year when he absolutely lit it up. Ellison the last two years was obviously the third best RB on the team yet continued to start and get the most time.

I will withhold the personal attacks on you since I don’t need to stoop that low. You don’t know me at all. I also have a different definition of success. If you’re being paid millions of dollars you should have more than one winning conference record in a decade.
 
deacdixieboy said:
Newman sat on the bench because he apparently looked bad in practice. He only came in because Sam got hurt and then was obviously better than Sam. Dortch also barely played until his final year when he absolutely lit it up. Ellison the last two years was obviously the third best RB on the team yet continued to start and get the most time.
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dortch was redshirted his true freshman year. Then his redshirt frosh year, in which he apparently “barely played”, he was a freshman all american, second team all-acc, and “Set school redshirt freshman records for all-purpose yards (1,290), receiving yards (722) and touchdown receptions (9) ...” and came into his 3rd year as pre-season all-acc.

So Newman sucked in practice yet clawson should have started him anyway. That sounds pretty brilliant. And Newman obviously later proved to be a very reasonable young man who made outstanding decisions on how to advance his football career.

You might be right re: ellison / claiborne. But what i don’t know, and i’m guessing many of us don’t, is who was the better blocker? Better at picking up blitzes? Perhaps it was Ellison. And here’s the thing, if you only put your best true runner in when you are calling running plays, sometimes defenses can figure this out!
 
Dillon Fence said:
how was dortch mismanaged? newman??

We all knew KWIII was a stud but i think we kinda had a decent season after he left. C’est la vie.

And any assertion that a coach mismanaged a situation implies that the assertor thinks they could have handled it better.

I am pretty certain that the vast majority of people who criticize highly successful people like claswon have never held leadership or management positions themselves and think that every decision that a coach has to make is binary. When you are dealing with 100 18-22 year olds who all think they should be a star, that’s a lot of ego to manage. Rarely is there an obvious answer. Clawson gets it right 95% of the time.
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He’s gotten it right 37% of the time in ACC play on the only thing that matters. Just saying.

Not being concerned with the trajectory of our program at this point is wild to me. Still hopeful and somewhat confident DC is the guy to right the ship.
 
tigerswood said:
He’s gotten it right 37% of the time in ACC play on the only thing that matters. Just saying.

Not being concerned with the trajectory of our program at this point is wild to me. Still hopeful and somewhat confident DC is the guy to right the ship.
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Right. These huge scoring numbers have also rarely occurred against good teams.
 
tigerswood said:
He’s gotten it right 37% of the time in ACC play on the only thing that matters. Just saying.

Not being concerned with the trajectory of our program at this point is wild to me. Still hopeful and somewhat confident DC is the guy to right the ship.
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Sure, after this year, I am concerned as are many, but i am equally confident in Clawson. And dumb assertions need to be called out.
 
Clawson is a good coach, move on. Wake is a tough place to be a coach and he has done a great job, for the most part. Our post Hartman situation was a bite in the ass…as I thought post Newman o KW3 we’re going to be. Let’s see how we respond next year…
 
deacdixieboy said:
As does the same old LOWF bullshit. We have had one winning ACC season. Results matter.
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We've also only had 10 winning ACC seasons ever in 70+ years.

1959: 4-3
1964: 4-3
1970: 5-1
1979: 4-2
1987: 4-3
1988: 4-3
2006: 6-2
2007: 5-3
2011: 5-3
2021: 7-1

Having sustained success at Wake Forest in football is really fucking hard. Jim Grobe and Bill Dooley are the only coaches to manage more than one winning season, and Paul Amen, Grobe, and Clawson are the only coaches to do it at all after their second season at the school (i.e., in their own fully developed program). This is not to say we shouldn't have expectations and want to do as well as we can, but some of y'all on here act like winning 6 games a season is our birthright, when in fact it has been the outlier. Yes, we had a bad year this year, and yes, that's frustrating. But the Clawson era as a whole has been the longest sustained competitive era in Wake football history (a seven year run where our worst conference record was 3-5), full stop. The man's earned the benefit of the doubt.
 
quzybuk said:
We've also only had 10 winning ACC seasons ever in 70+ years.

1959: 4-3
1964: 4-3
1970: 5-1
1979: 4-2
1987: 4-3
1988: 4-3
2006: 6-2
2007: 5-3
2011: 5-3
2021: 7-1

Having sustained success at Wake Forest in football is really fucking hard. Jim Grobe and Bill Dooley are the only coaches to manage more than one winning season, and Paul Amen, Grobe, and Clawson are the only coaches to do it at all after their second season at the school (i.e., in their own fully developed program). This is not to say we shouldn't have expectations and want to do as well as we can, but some of y'all on here act like winning 6 games a season is our birthright, when in fact it has been the outlier. Yes, we had a bad year this year, and yes, that's frustrating. But the Clawson era as a whole has been the longest sustained competitive era in Wake football history (a seven year run where our worst conference record was 3-5), full stop. The man's earned the benefit of the doubt.
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I don’t disagree with your last statement. But he’s also not above criticism. It’s a new age in college sports where winning 6 games for P5 schools is easier than ever. We play more games than they did in the past and the gulf between the P5 and the rest is huge. Clawson has also benefited from greater buy-in from Wake admin, fans, and alumni than any other WF coach. Yes, I am aware that he is also the catalyst behind a lot of that buy-in, but the point still stands.
 
deacdixieboy said:
I don’t disagree with your last statement. But he’s also not above criticism. It’s a new age in college sports where winning 6 games for P5 schools is easier than ever. We play more games than they did in the past and the gulf between the P5 and the rest is huge. Clawson has also benefited from greater buy-in from Wake admin, fans, and alumni than any other WF coach. Yes, I am aware that he is also the catalyst behind a lot of that buy-in, but the point still stands.
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Winning 6 games is one thing, a winning record in conference is another, and you've somewhat moved the goalposts here.

I do agree that with the systemic advantages for ACC schools comparatively that we should be looking at 3-4 wins OOC every season (the curse of the ND scheduling agreement, I guess... good for our ratings, not so good for our record). But 3 OOC wins still means we have to win 3 games in conference play to get to 6+ wins, and our division under Clawson (the Clemson juggernaut, some good FSU teams, some good Louisville teams, State being fairly consistently above average) was by far the stronger side of the conference. People have been acting like winning conference games is something you can wave a magic wand and have it just happen, when in reality most of our ACC games are against schools that have more roster composite talent than us and significant resource advantages even after the infrastructure investments that we've made. Winning 3-4 games in the ACC is something that is in the realm of reason for most seasons, but expecting us to win 5+ ACC games in any sort of consistent fashion is not.

Now, with all that said, Clawson should not be immune from warranted criticism, and I do agree that a fair bit of the fallout from this season can be laid at some coaching decisions (and thus criticism is warranted). But criticism is not the same thing as calling for him to be fired for one bad season... that's ridiculous.
 
Dillon Fence said:
Not going to acknowledge your comment about Dortch was wrong, eh?
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Up with 102 degree fever, so I’ll take a stab. He’s not really wrong. Clawson has been slow to move away from the redshirting strategy which has resulted in Wake only getting 2 seasons (or less in the case of injury) out of really good players like Dortch and Bates.

In 2016, Tabari Hines was our leading receiver with only 447 yards. It would be silly to argue that Dortch wouldn’t have significantly helped the team at WR, in addition to his All American punt return abilities. In fact, Dortch was so much better at the slot position than Hines (or I guess Hines wasn’t that good) that Clawson never put them on the field together in 2017.

Of course redshirting has significantly benefited Wake in many (most) cases, but there were certainly a few occasions, like with Dortch, that DC got it wrong.
 
BlackjackMc said:
Clawson has ten years as the Wake Forest coach. That's twice as long as any previous stint. He builds a program, wins, then moves on to a better job. This is new territory. He's not a fresh face with new ideas. He's the coach that led a program to seven straight bowl games then got blindsided when his next great QB could not cut it when the lights turned on and Dave had no Plan B. Combine that with a completely new way of doing business he does not like. This team isn't going to fill a few holes and return to relevance. This will be a major rebuild that could take a season or two. He deserves the opportunity. I just hope he is up to it.
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No Plan B? Certainly, like every other school who loses a starting QB to injury (Jordan/FSU) or due to poor play (Van Dyke/Miami) has a Plan B. It's called 2 -4;other QBs on scholarship. Dave's problem is not being blindsided. It's old fashioned stubornness. It has reared its head in multiple ways throughout his career here, always to the program's detriment. The difference is this time it's not scud missile but has the potential to be a nuclear bomb. Saying it might take a couple of seasons to right the ship admits the impact of what has happened.

Walter micromanaged the baseball games for years. Signal a guy to steal home and he's out by 5 yards. Have your best HR hitter at the plate in a crucial moment and he's told to bunt....and since he isn't a good bunter, he strikes out or pops the ball up for a fly out to the pitcher. But he finally stepped back and let his assistant coaches coach the bases. The program turned the corner.

Dave's had a great run at Wake, but being the pessimist I don't see him righting the ship, unless we see some major change in attitude. I spoke to a friend in the AD. He said he he couldn't figure it out, nor anyone in the entire AD, why Griffis continued to start. It wasn't just us fans with 0 coaching experience, guys. That being said, even when there is not such a problem, coaching success fades with time for most coaches. It's a fact of the game. Those who achieve at the highest level are eventually let go because of losing seasons. It's football
 
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