OFFICIAL Wake-Syracuse Game Thread

[PhDeac]

"Now that you are seeing the early differences between Grobe and Clawson, do you still disagree with the notion that Wake should have a floor of 6 wins and 5 in a down year?"

2 wins and 5 losses seem to have killed whatever optimism Ph had went he sent me this.

I don't know if you really don't understand what I was talking about or if you're trolling.

From the thread "What is Wake Football's Floor?"

June 11, 2011 in reference to our 3-9 2010 season.

Go back to my original statement. 5 wins is a reasonable floor. Given our schedule, if we get fewer than 5 wins, something is wrong and needs to be addressed. We're not playing in the SEC or Big XII. The idea that it's ok to have a season like last year definitely hurts the program.

So what do you disagree with here, DC?

This is what you posted to end that thread.

A floor is the lowest acceptable win total that prevents a coach from being fired.

If Wake ever went 3 years with 5 or fewer wins total, that would do it for me, despite how big a fan I am of Grobe's.

If floor doesn't mean unacceptable and that doesn't mean fire the coach, then it's not a floor.

People easily see the something wrong now but they didn't see it back then.

 

[liveanddiedeac]

I just don't get why it's surprising anyone. Didn't pretty much everyone have us pegged for 2 or 3 wins this season?

I think most of us knew that was a strong possibility. I think anybody that says they expected the offense to be this bad is lying, so add that to the fact that we thought we would struggle even before we knew the offense would be this bad and we're pretty much where one would expect.

 

[PhDeac]

Add that we expected to at least see smarter football, 100% effort, and improvement. Losing 30-7 at home to a Cuse team who had only beaten Nova and CMU this season coming off a bye week is crushing. Nobody can claim they saw that coming back in August.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Nobody predicted the offense would be this bad because nobody has been this bad on offense in 15 years. Why would we have predicted it to be the worst offense in the country over a fifteen year span?

Kudos to Phil Steele for ranking us last offensively in his preseason rankings.

 

[liveanddiedeac]

Add that we expected to at least see smarter football, 100% effort, and improvement. Losing 30-7 at home to a Cuse team who had only beaten Nova and CMU this season coming off a bye week is crushing. Nobody can claim they saw that coming back in August.

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.

 

[Deacfreak07]

Nobody predicted the offense would be this bad because nobody has been this bad on offense in 15 years. Why would we have predicted it to be the worst offense in the country over a fifteen year span?

Kudos to Phil Steele for ranking us last offensively in his preseason rankings.

That's a fair point. I don't think people appreciated how important Camp was for us last year.

 

[liveanddiedeac]

That's a fair point. I don't think people appreciated how important Camp was for us last year.

I don't know about that, I think we saw what life was like without Camp last year and knew it was very bad. I think some of us thought that Tyree Harris might be able to step up this year and become a go to receiver, but he hasn't even played a snap this year since Clawson decided he'd better off redshirting and get stronger.

 

[PhDeac]

I'm sure DCDeac predicted our offense would score 1 TD in 3 conference games while giving up 3 TDs. He doesn't understand why this is surprising anyone.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Everybody was underestimated as far as what kind of actual impact they had. Harris and Price were both much maligned but were ACC-level performers. Camp was obviously a stud and we had actual threats when we had the ball. Now we have an offensive line that is somehow worse, a freshman QB, no legitimate offensive threat at all, a bunch of freshmen running backs with a converted receiver getting some carries, and a new offensive game plan.

The only thing that is noticeably better is the tight end position, partially because Cam is really good, and partially because we didn't utilize tight ends for the last eight or so years of the Grobe era.

 

[liveanddiedeac]

The funny thing is the offensive toucdowns we have scored, though few, we've ran some really good looking plays. That at least makes me hopeful that once Clawson gets the OL fixed and we get some more weapons on offense, we'll be effective in the redzone.

 

[PhDeac]

The funny thing is the offensive toucdowns we have scored, though few, we've ran some really good looking plays. That at least makes me hopeful that once Clawson gets the OL fixed and we get some more weapons on offense, we'll be effective in the redzone.

Yeah. Those are outliers now, but over time they may become normal. That's encouraging.

 

[DCDeac]

Add that we expected to at least see smarter football, 100% effort, and improvement. Losing 30-7 at home to a Cuse team who had only beaten Nova and CMU this season coming off a bye week is crushing. Nobody can claim they saw that coming back in August.

Ph, no need to complicate something so simple. Well after that thread was long dead you PM'd me out of the blue with that quote. You were jazzed about how good a job Clawson was doing and you reiterated that 5 wins during a down year should be Clawson's floor.

I'm fine that you no longer approve of Clawson based on your perceived notion that we aren't playing smart football or giving effort or whatever. I'm just pointing out that you were all about Clawson prior to him going 2-5 this year, a record the vast majority of us predicted, and now you are heavily criticizing him.

We're starting an undersized true freshman quarterback, have no offensive line to speak of, and we'd been starting Orville at RB even though he's not a true RB. I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over where a bad offense ranks in the history of our bad offenses. And yes, I can absolutely claim that losing 30-7 to Syracuse at home was more than likely. Actually our defense is better than I thought it was going to be while our offense is worse - all told it's pretty much a wash with my expectations based on the ability we have.

It reminds me of [name redacted]'s first year. The teams both coaches inherited are equally garbage and were guaranteed to finish in the bottom 1-2 of the ACC. That team couldn't defend man-to-man against Stetson, this team probably couldn't block Stetson's pass rush. No amount of pre-season coaching or hype was going to change that.

The difference is Clawson has a history of turning around programs whereas [name redacted] had a history of doing pretty much nothing everywhere. The truth is there hasn't been enough time to recruit or develop our team enough to make a massive difference on the field yet. Clawson worked his ass off recruiting, [name redacted] failed miserably out of the gate. Every indicator outside of what's happening on the field engenders faith in me that Clawson will come through, whereas every [name redacted] indicator created massive doubt.

This is why a floor for Clawson was a bad idea then when you PM'd me your new floor and it's a bad idea now. He should get more than 7 games before all faith is lost in him in my opinion. You disagree, that's fine. Different strokes for different folks. What's on the field now is not on him yet in my book.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Losing 30-7 to Syracuse was more than likely when the line was 6 points in Vegas and objectively on paper up to the game the teams were only about 8 or 9 points apart according to literally every overall statistical metric?

I think losing was likely. I do not believe losing by 3 and a half touchdowns to Syracuse was likely at all and I doubt that it would really happen that many times overall if we played 1000 times. It doesn't really matter one way or the other since we only play once and we lost 30-7, just not really sold on the fact that we're actually 23 points worse than Syracuse on average.

 

[liveanddiedeac]

Losing 30-7 to Syracuse was more than likely when the line was 6 points in Vegas and objectively on paper up to the game the teams were only about 8 or 9 points apart according to literally every overall statistical metric?

I think losing was likely. I do not believe losing by 3 and a half touchdowns to Syracuse was likely at all and I doubt that it would really happen that many times overall if we played 1000 times. It doesn't really matter one way or the other since we only play once and we lost 30-7, just not really sold on the fact that we're actually 23 points worse than Syracuse on average.

The real difference are the scores the offense is giving up. We gave 2 to Cuse, remove them and the game is a 9 point game.

 

[DCDeac]

The real difference are the scores the offense is giving up. We gave 2 to Cuse, remove them and the game is a 9 point game.

Right. I mean, we put together what - a 70 yard drive and TD in the first quarter, then it was 10-7 before a pick-six where Wolford got murdered sent the game into disaster mode.

I dunno, it's just not the type of game that makes me suddenly start doubting Clawson and his entire staff.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

I don't think we can really gain much intel one way or the other on Clawson regarding the offense this year. I mean in the opener we gained 94 total yards against ULM. We clearly have no shot at moving the ball regardless of what happens

 

[PhDeac]

I'm fine with Clawson and my logic still holds. And you still agree with it. His job is to fix what is wrong. The floor fell out of the program under Grobe and Clawson is trying to fix it.

 

[liveanddiedeac]

Right. I mean, we put together what - a 70 yard drive and TD in the first quarter, then it was 10-7 before a pick-six where Wolford got murdered sent the game into disaster mode.

I dunno, it's just not the type of game that makes me suddenly start doubting Clawson and his entire staff.

Well, when you've got an offense that not only can't move the ball, but also is prone to giving up points things can snowball on you in hurry. It doesn't make me doubt Clawson either. It was certainly disappointing to play that way after a bye week and it was refreshing for Clawson to basically throw himself under the bus for it, but I don't really doubt he and his staff did what they could to get us ready to play. I think we could all see this type of game coming, if it weren't for inspired performances by our defense this could've happened in the ULM game, the Utah State game, the Louisville game, or even much sooner than it did in the FSU game. I'm sure the coaches are seeing things they could do better and differently, but nothing I've seen suggests to me they aren't doing a good job with what they have to work with. The most important thing this staff has to do this year is recruit and so far it seems they've done a good job.

 

[Milhouse]

my logic still holds.

 

[DCDeac]

I'm fine with Clawson and my logic still holds. And you still agree with it. His job is to fix what is wrong. The floor fell out of the program under Grobe and Clawson is trying to fix it.

I mean, all you wrote was that Clawson's floor even in a down year is 5 wins. We're not getting to 5 wins. Even if you meant that's his floor starting in season 2 or 3 or 4, which you definitely did not mention - I still don't agree with it.

If I say Manning's floor is 15 wins this year and the team wins 8, how could I claim to be happy with the job he did and also claim it's logical?