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November/Post Bye Woes

Yep, well, we tried, we just aren’t good enough

Let’s focus on basketb…never mind
 
BeachBumDeac said:
Yeah geez why won’t these sports fans just be rational.
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You are talking to a Wake Forest Football/ Kentucky Football/ Cincinnati Reds fan, if I didn’t maintain realistic expectations I would go insane.
 
ddeacs98 said:
Who was it, Prosser or Grobe, with the play like your hair’s on fire quote? Doesn’t matter, because that’s what opposing DL’s are doing. As long as they do that, opposing secondaries can be mediocre, yet still be effective.
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Grobe
 
Lots of hand wringing and sweeping conclusions being made here. We are all frustrated after the last 3 games - no one more than Clawson and the players, I am sure. The fact is that we have mostly been outperforming our recruiting rankings for years now - there could be a myriad of reasons for that. E.G., players' rankings suffering BECAUSE they commit to Wake; our coaches being especially successful at identifying under-rated talent; our successful redshirt and develop program resulting in more of our contributing players being older and more experienced; our coaches having developed a scheme that uniquely maximizes our personnel... Take your pick. It is probably some of all of these.
I think that we have shown that we can compete with pretty much anyone and that we can consistently win 7-10 games a year - with outliers at 6 or 11 or whatever... The presumptive talent gap means that our margin of error against good teams is very slim. We aren't going to dominate good teams with talent.
The outcome of any one sporting event can turn on any number or tiny, sometimes random things. They are not always able to be explained. I don't think there is any way to explain our third quarter vs. Louisville - it was freakish. In the State and the UNC games, either one could have come out differently if any one of many things had gone differently. We should have won both, for sure - and you can certainly point to mistakes by players and coaches that cost us both. But you could also point to any number of other things that could have gone differently and we would be having a very different conversation - key penalties, ball bounces, injuries,... whatever... It just seems like none of the "luck" factors have fallen in our favor lately. It happens.
 
I think the recruiting rankings dropping when someone commits to WF take is overblown at this point. There is so much data and there are so many recruiting sites that there isn’t any more of a conspiracy there than there is about all of the refs secretly being told to make UNC win.
 
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deacdixieboy said:
I think the recruiting rankings dropping when someone commits to WF take is overblown at this point. There is so much data and there are so many recruiting sites that there is any more of a conspiracy there than there is about all of the refs secretly being told to make UNC win.
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It's probably overblown, but, I have no doubt that a player that commits to Wake will experience a jump in ratings if he de-commits and commits to a higher profile and higher-rated program - even though nothing about the player would have changed. If a kid is perceived as a solid commit to Wake any higher rated programs that might have been interested may back off - and I believe the ranking services take into account who is recruiting a kid in figuring their rankings.
You would think the ranking services would notice that we are pretty darn good at identifying talent and figure that in - but they don't seem to.
 
scooter84 said:
It's probably overblown, but, I have no doubt that a player that commits to Wake will experience a jump in ratings if he de-commits and commits to a higher profile and higher-rated program - even though nothing about the player would have changed. If a kid is perceived as a solid commit to Wake any higher rated programs that might have been interested may back off - and I believe the ranking services take into account who is recruiting a kid in figuring their rankings.
You would think the ranking services would notice that we are pretty darn good at identifying talent and figure that in - but they don't seem to.
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That’s fair. It could also simply be that a committed player receives less attention than a non-committed one by these services when there are thousands of players to scout.
 
deacdixieboy said:
That’s fair. It could also simply be that a committed player receives less attention than a non-committed one by these services when there are thousands of players to scout.
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That too. And maybe the really top, top players tend to drag their recruitment out longer because they like the attention and the process?
 
I think the Wake coaches have recruited the best players available to them. I believe the development of those players has been outstanding. I hope the recent success and positive national recognition will result in better available players and better recruiting classes. I believe MDMH has a valid, accurate assessment of the football program. Other opinions can be equally valid and accurate.

The results over the past seven seasons of Wake football is a conference record of 26-27 including this year. There are three 3 win seasons, two 4 win seasons and a 7 win season. This season the Deacs won't win more than 4 games and could win as few as two games. OOC scheduling has afforded the Deacs the opportunity to play in a bowl game all seven years. That is the level of the Wake Forest football program at present because those are the real numbers, not some shoulda, coulda, woulda. The Deacs had their outlier 7 win season in 2021 and it was a pleasure. The Deacons seem to have returned to the mean this year. Three wins to finish the season will result in a 4-4 conference record and a tie for the third best season in history. This is not LOWF. This is the record and a team is only as good as their record.

If you believe the Demon Deacons are better than their record, it is your choice. If you expect the Deacs to win 10 or more games every season, there is nobody stopping you. However your expectations are not supported by the Clawson's record as a coach. I would enjoy 10 or more wins every year, so I hope your expectations are met. It reminds me of the adage "nothing great can be accomplished without enthusiasm". As for myself I've found this adage to be true. "Expectations are nothing more than disappointments in development." That is why threads of this nature are seen in forums like this.
 
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NASADeac said:
Pilchard, I read and agree with what you say. What I did not hear from you was the reason why the last three weeks have been a disaster. Please elaborate.
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The UNC game wasn’t a disaster. We scored 34, led with 3 mins to go and lost by 2. State was ranked, had an elite defense and a huge home field advantage for the sellout night game. We lost 30-21. It was a close game. Only Ville was a disaster.
 
Hartman isn’t to blame. He’s getting his ass crushed. You can only do so much when OL is putting you back with false start or holding penalties. Oline just sucks. And if it’s on the players or coaches, then so be it.
 
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wfu22fan said:
The UNC game wasn’t a disaster. We scored 34, led with 3 mins to go and lost by 2. State was ranked, had an elite defense and a huge home field advantage for the sellout night game. We lost 30-21. It was a close game. Only Ville was a disaster.
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Yep. 8 TO's at lewisville was in fact disastrous.
 
I love how some of you think that WFU football should be winning 10 games a year. In the entire history of Wake Forest football, the team has won 11 games twice, and NEVER finished the season with 9 or 10 wins.

For the last 25 years folks have asked me before every season, what do you think of the Deacs this year? My pat answer had always been between 4-8 and 8-4...higher amount if the team got some breaks.

DC has raised expectations around here, and I'm sure he wants to compete for National Championships, but ya'll are insane if you think the Deacons should be winning 10 games a year, every year. That is just asking for disappointment. Call it LOWF, but damn, step away from the crack pipe.
 
Between scheduling and the program DC has built, I will say the floor for me is now 7-5. I expect winning regular seasons and a bowl game minimum. Fewer than 7 wins is a disappointment.

I feel like 8-9 win seasons should be the norm (including bowl).
 
The "all you people who expect to win 10 games every season" line is straw man. Nobody thinks that ... However, it is important to remember that we play in the ACC and schedule out of conference games that we should win every year. It's not "crazy" to think we should win 8+ games every year with the resources and track record over the last 7 years. That's 4-0 out of conference and 4-4 in conference. When the schedule aligns, we should be able to win 10 games. In the Atlantic, we have better programs than BC and Syracuse and hopefully Louisville. We play Duke every year. FSU, Clemson and State are better programs historically but other than Clemson nobody there is top 10 program. The Coastal is a dumpster fire. When we get rid of divisions it should help us in the short term. Getting a schedule with Duke, GT and VT (which all suck right now) and five games against "the rest" could move expectations up higher.

We just need to start winning meaningful games late in the season. Grobe's win against Maryland in 2006, Clawson beating State in 2017, 2018 and 2021 are really the extent of late regular season wins in the last 20 years that mattered.
 
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