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OFFICIAL Wake-Syracuse Game Thread

liveanddiedeac said:
Heck, even if someone thought the offense would be this historically bad stats wise, there's no way in thunder anyone would've thought the offense would've given up so many scores to the opposing defense.
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Yeah, this is really the surprising thing. Giving up scores on offense span several players, including Wolford, Cameron and James. I've never seen anything like it.
 
The record is not surprising, but the level of offensive ineptitude is.

Obviously, the majority of the blame for the woeful offense is the lack of talent, but I am concerned by the lack of adjustments that the offense makes despite, what appears to my untrained eye, the same game plan by every defense WF sees. From the ULM game on, teams have killed WF and caused turnovers via blitzing on the edges. particularly on the QB's backside. Even so, WF continues to use offensive sets where the o-line gets little or no help with outside pass rushers. Obviously, it would be great to have OTs that don't get beat. It has been painfully obvious that is not the case; yet, WF still run schemes that leave the OTs with little or no help. That scheme did not work in week 1, and it's still not working in week 7. How about a maximum protect scheme that keep TEs and FBs in to protect? How about scrapping the delayed run play out of the shotgun for more quic hitting run plays? Realize that a lot of this trying to make chicken salad out of chicken **** and it's wise to defer to the judgment of those that spend all day with team and studying film, but when an offense is this bad (when an argument could be made that WF should just run the kneel-down on offense) and there is no sign of improvement, coaching has to take some of the blame.

With all that said, I remain completely confident in the Clawson hire. He has found success everywhere; he is a tireless recruiter, he is charismatic. He will win at WF. Not surprisingly, he is still making adjustments with a short and young roster. The future will be better.
 
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Pilchard said:
The record is not surprising, but the level of offensive ineptitude is.

Obviously, the majority of the blame for the woeful offense is the lack of talent, but I am concerned by the lack of adjustments that the offense makes despite, what appears to my untrained eye, the same game plan by every defense WF sees. From the ULM game on, teams have killed WF and caused turnovers via blitzing on the edges. particularly on the QB's backside. Even so, WF continues to use offensive sets where the o-line gets little or no help with outside pass rushers. Obviously, it would be great to have OTs that don't get beat. It has been painfully obvious that is not the case; yet, WF still run schemes that leave the OTs with little or no help. That scheme did not work in week 1, and it's still not working in week 7. How about a maximum protect scheme that keep TEs and FBs in to protect? How about scrapping the delayed run play out of the shotgun for more quic hitting run plays? Realize that a lot of this trying to make chicken salad out of chicken **** and it's wise to defer to the judgment of those that spend all day with team and studying film, but when an offense is this bad (when an argument could be made that WF should just run the kneel-down on offense) and there is no sign of improvement, coaching has to take some of the blame.

With all that said, I remain completely confident in the Clawson hire. He has found success everywhere; he is a tireless recruiter, he is charismatic. He will win at WF. Not surprisingly, he is still making adjustments with a short and young roster. The future will be better.
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It think the approach he's taking and some may disagree with, is that he's not going to make adjustments offensively that are going to deviate drastically from the system he's wanting to establish in an attempt to try to ingrain that system into the players and not waste time on temporary fixes. In other words I don't think he's going to try any and everything just to try to get something out of an already lost season, just to toss it out immediately after the season is over. I think there are adjustments being made, but there are within the offensive system they want to run. I think this season in his mind is drastically different than a season say where the coach's job is on the line and a coach might be trying everything from the wing T to shotgun 5 wide to save his job. Clawson knows he's been brought in to rebuild the program and I think he's doing it the way he's been successful before. Just my 2 cents anyway.

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worst football game of the year, will try to eliminate from my memory
 
I don't know why everyone in the world is in love with the delayed handoff. It seems that every team runs it and very few run it well.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
I don't know why everyone in the world is in love with the delayed handoff. It seems that every team runs it and very few run it well.
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I agree with that, it seems most college teams have adopted that as their primary running play. I think it can work, provided you have a good O-line and a good read option quarterback, but we don't.
 
The only reason I can come up with why we run the delayed handoff is that there is a second or two before the defense knows that we've handed off, so it's an attempt somewhat at disguising what we're doing. But the running backs are so slow that usually the defense can adapt and make the tackle anyway without much, if any, gain.
 
liveanddiedeac said:
It think the approach he's taking and some may disagree with, is that he's not going to make adjustments offensively that are going to deviate drastically from the system he's wanting to establish in an attempt to try to ingrain that system into the players and not waste time on temporary fixes. In other words I don't think he's going to try any and everything just to try to get something out of an already lost season, just to toss it out immediately after the season is over. I think there are adjustments being made, but there are within the offensive system they want to run. I think this season in his mind is drastically different than a season say where the coach's job is on the line and a coach might be trying everything from the wing T to shotgun 5 wide to save his job. Clawson knows he's been brought in to rebuild the program and I think he's doing it the way he's been successful before. Just my 2 cents anyway.

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But doesnt this go against a lot of the smoke that was blowed up our asses when he was hired about how his offenses at different stops have looked very different depending on what personnel was available? I remember that being trumpeted about how some years his teams were pass-heavy, other years run-heavy, etc. This rigidity was not what I anticipated.
 
P4nthers11 said:
But doesnt this go against a lot of the smoke that was blowed up our asses when he was hired about how his offenses at different stops have looked very different depending on what personnel was available? I remember that being trumpeted about how some years his teams were pass-heavy, other years run-heavy, etc. This rigidity was not what I anticipated.
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Well, I don't know enough about the offenses he ran at his prior schools to answer that. I think it could be more of a situation where it's basically the same system, but some years it's been more run heavy and some years it's been more pass heavy depending on the strength of the personnel. I do think maybe it's a situation where he's really trying to establish his basic system this year, then when he gets it established and gets his players it can be adjusted year to year depending on the strength of the O-line and skill players. In all fairness, we suck running the ball and we suck passing the ball this year, so it's kind of hard to be run or pass heavy this year.

I do think for him to be successful at Wake long-term there will have to be flexibility in his system because we're not going to be able to go out and consistently get great running backs or receivers year in and out, so the strength of the offense will certainly vary over his tenure.
 
L+D, I agree completely about his need for flexability. But what is his offensive philosophy? The first Grobe coached games I saw live was BC in '03. Willie Idelette put on a show. I never saw anybody that fast wear the Black and Gold. I got Grobes philosophy. Speed Uber Alles, even if Willie was weighing about 145 at the time. At least Claw know what to do with a TE.
 
DEACS76 said:
L+D, I agree completely about his need for flexability. But what is his offensive philosophy? The first Grobe coached games I saw live was BC in '03. Willie Idelette put on a show. I never saw anybody that fast wear the Black and Gold. I got Grobes philosophy. Speed Uber Alles, even if Willie was weighing about 145 at the time. At least Claw know what to do with a TE.
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Well, Grobe blames Riley for messing up his offensive philosophy....:confused:

I think Clawson is a spread guy who wants to get the playmakers in position to win some individual match-ups, we just don't really have anybody capable of winning individual match-ups consistently right now and our O-line doesn't really give our receivers time to win individual match-ups anyway. It will certainly be interesting to watch the offense evolve next year and future years, hopefully we see some real improvement next season, if we don't there will certainly be reason to question Clawson and his staff.
 
liveanddiedeac's posts are good.

If you look back it makes sense:

2008 at UT had the famous worst of all time offensive season with the normal Clawfense run/pass mix
2009 at Bowling Green inherited the small roster, was coming off trainwreck year at UT, threw the ball 70% of the time from pass happy spread, had a pretty good offense
2010-2011 continued to throw the ball a ton (38 and 36 pass plays per game), offensives were horrible
2012-2013 returned to what I would consider his "normal" offense, offense was good in 2013 going back to pretty much same mix as 2008.

I bet, looking back, that he thinks that adjusting to the pass first spread and getting those small initial gains set him back at Bowling Green. So here, regardless of what he said in a day 1 presser, he is going to install his normal offense. Plus, he just had his only really good offensive season at the FBS level last year so I wouldn't expect tactical changes / there is a lot of belief in his system stemming from 2013 etc.
 
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