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Wake Forest Football Recruiting

I guess I fear Clawson is a little myopic in his vision for the program.

We continue to focus on small, under the radar recruits. Does winning seasons and bowls not attract a few more 4 stars?

Transfer of starters who really were valuable to next seasons success.

Poor decisions to go pro early by Dortch, Newman, and Surratt. Why leave without a better chance of success?

Clawson's overall bravado of my way or the highway. He may be justified in most instances but I'm starting to sense not every player buys in to the plan.

The smallness on D and predictable O that every conference opponent has seen ad nauseam and knows how to stop, is clearly evident.
 
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80deacon said:
I guess I fear Clawson is a little myopic in his vision for the program.

We continue to focus on small, under the radar recruits. Does winning seasons and bowls not attract a few more 4 stars?

Transfer of starters who really were valuable to next seasons success.

Poor decisions to go pro early by Dortch, Newman, and Surratt. Why leave without a better chance of success?

Clawson's overall bravado of my way or the highway. He may be justified in most instances but I'm starting to sense not every player buys in to the plan.

The smallness on D and predictable O that every conference opponent has seen ad nauseam and knows how to stop, is clearly evident.
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4 star recruits don't look at the winning seasons or the bowls, they see 1 player drafted this year and a QB who had to transfer away from our offense go undrafted. Recruits want to play in the NFL, once we do better on that, more 4 stars will come.

That being said, fewer players are committing this May than last, and it looks like alot more weight is being put on the camp circuit.
 
The "under the radar" angle is by necessity. I'm sure Clawson would rather get the 4* guys but that's not going to happen until we put more guys in the NFL and get 9+ wins a year for several years. Right now, Clawson is the guy who wins with less.
 
Right. Clawson is a competitive dude. I’m sure he would love to beat UNC, FSU, UGA, etc on the recruiting trail for highly ranked players. He is building a program. It will take time to convince recruits with elite options to start coming to Wake with any consistency.
 
PhDeac said:
The "under the radar" angle is by necessity. I'm sure Clawson would rather get the 4* guys but that's not going to happen until we put more guys in the NFL and get 9+ wins a year for several years. Right now, Clawson is the guy who wins with less.
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Exactly. The hot Clawson takes are ridiculous.
 
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Different era, but Grobe pulled in some NFL level talent, but they all did not make it, obviously. I think we give Clawson a few of these guys (talent level) and we win a LOT:

Alphonso
Curry
Arnoux
Jyles Tucker
Jeremy Thompson
Kyle Wilbur
Gattis
Chip Vaughn
Abbate
Kevin Johnson
Boldin
Kenny Moore
Givens
Tereshinski
Lou Frazier
Vallos
DeGeare
Steve Justice
Looney
Barclay
Andrews

I mean, our best corner on last year's defense would not play on the 2005-2009 teams. Issue: we should have won more games in years 2005 and 2009 (see: Lobo and coaching).

DE example: the only guy on last year's defense that could compete with Thompson, Tucker and Wilbur (level of talent) is Boogie Basham. The rest, respectfully, are not really close.
 
80deacon said:
I'm not feeling good about FB future....
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Yes what gives you this feeling? We are even in contention for Edgerrin James kid who retweets every Wake fb tweet. I think we have a very bright future in both fb and bb
 
Eden James doesn't seem to have an big time offer list.
 
That we should be a more attractive and able to recruit better with our extended success under Clawson is not an unreasonable position to take. Your fault, my fault, nobody's fault- we should be able to recruit better.
 
dcon69 said:
That we should be a more attractive and able to recruit better with our extended success under Clawson is not an unreasonable position to take. Your fault, my fault, nobody's fault- we should be able to recruit better.
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By what metric is recruiting judged? If the recruiting rankings were accurate, WF would have finished at the bottom of the conference every year under Clawson; he's a good coach, but he is not God. As WF wins 7+ games every year (not counting last year's COVID shortened schedule), while other conference programs not named Clemson fail to do so, how can the recruiting rankings be viewed as a reliable basis of evaluating talent? They are not.

The top 250 football recruits are so athletically superior that they are easy to judge; so, to the extent that Bama, Clemson and tOSu dominate in that pool, football recruiting rankings can be accurate. WF does not recruit in that pool, but very few schools do other than a random recruit here or there. The vast majority of Power Conference recruits fall into the 251 to 1500 range. Sorry, but recruiting rankings are notoriously unreliable when trying to rank the #84 WR versus the #121 WR. So, the default methodology of all recruiting rankings is to give the better ranking to the recruit with more offers (e.g., Mike Allen, who had a lot of offers, was ranked high, but could not play). For the vast majority of WF football recruits, Clawson and staff typically spot the talent first, make an early offer, then get a commit. When that happens, if the kid doesn't waver, he's not going to get any more offers (why give an offer to recruit who is 100% committed); so, that player's ranking, with limited offers is going to be lower than an inferior player that waits to commit and has a longer offer list. This has happened so many times with WF football recruits, it's mind-boggling that we have to rehash this every year.

If you want to ding Clawson for not doing better for the highest end recruits, there may be some validity, but that is a tough nut to crack, but it's really dumb to get spun up if a recruiting website rates BC, State, Cuse, VT, Pitt and GT as having a "higher rated" football recruiting class than WF as that has proven over time to be completely meaningless.
 
Well that “trade” worked out well.
 
4 years of eligibility. He gets to learn from guys like Miles Fox and Tyler Williams.

Glad to have Kevin!
 
Well I can forgive him for misspelling 'Forest' because we clearly don't know how to type 'invasion.'

Also, just as we lose Boogie Basham, we gain Kevin Pointer = awesome football name
 
Looks like a great pickup — welcome!
 
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