• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Wake Forest Football Recruiting

While I trust in clawson and am very impressed with what he has done, I’m not as optimistic as some. This is the 4th straight commitment without another committable P5 offer. There are obviously players that will work out such as dortch (who actually had other P5 offers but still not highly sought after), ejiofor, and others. Time will tell, but I’m very worried about the depth and long term sustainability of this program if we cannot get commitments from guys who are more sought after.
 
Rondell Bothroyd committed as well. 3* TE who had offers from Temple and BC
 
247 has Bothroyd as a Temple hard commit. Looks like a flip.
 
Richardwfu said:
While I trust in clawson and am very impressed with what he has done, I’m not as optimistic as some. This is the 4th straight commitment without another committable P5 offer. There are obviously players that will work out such as dortch (who actually had other P5 offers but still not highly sought after), ejiofor, and others. Time will tell, but I’m very worried about the depth and long term sustainability of this program if we cannot get commitments from guys who are more sought after.
Click to expand...

Really makes you wonder when you see posters and articles touting "New Facilities (TM)" to promote our ability to recruit and Deac94's statistics showing a decline in recruits with a P5 offer other than Wake from 57% to 29% over the past three classes. Some serious dissonance among the "facts" being bandied about on recruiting.
 
This is 6 commits in the past week. All surprises to me.
I didn't think we had that many ships to offer.
Are we losing more players to graduation, transfer, etc than expected?
 
Lohengrin said:
Really makes you wonder when you see posters and articles touting "New Facilities (TM)" to promote our ability to recruit and Deac94's statistics showing a decline in recruits with a P5 offer other than Wake from 57% to 29% over the past three classes. Some serious dissonance among the "facts" being bandied about on recruiting.
Click to expand...

As has been stated on here several times, Clawson doesn't care one bit about recruiting rankings - he only cares if he can sign the players he's targeting. And in the past few years he's changed how he targets those players by using an algorithm. It's been posted before, but here's an article on the approach. https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/07/07/sports/205075/
 
Dekin said:
This is 6 commits in the past week. All surprises to me.
I didn't think we had that many ships to offer.
Are we losing more players to graduation, transfer, etc than expected?
Click to expand...

I have the scholarship count at 87 or 88 depending on Dionte Austin's status. So there will be some further attrition. But this is where we usually are at signing day. Then a few departures become public in the weeks/months that follow. Looks fairly routine.
 
The recruiting algorithm has been working for us so far - not going to start doubting it now. Do your thing, coaches.
 
I wonder if the staff believes that they now have a good core of guys that will be playing over the next couple of seasons and feel that they can take some guys that have high potential but need a couple of years on the shelf before they are really ready.
 
Possibly. But I think they're just going after the best players they think they can get.
 
This is also the first year with the new recruit signing date, so I’m sure that will take some getting used to. Without looking, we’ve gotten some of our better recruits late in previous cycles and that’s not as great an option anymore (Byrd and Bates come immediately to mind as two iirc).
 
Bubble Boy said:
I wonder if the staff believes that they now have a good core of guys that will be playing over the next couple of seasons and feel that they can take some guys that have high potential but need a couple of years on the shelf before they are really ready.
Click to expand...

I think this has probably been the plan from Day 1 of the Clawson era. He's never had an interest in the type of recruits that would help in the short-term but had limited upside. One of the reasons that Wake has never been a big player in the grad transfer market (until this past year when there was an attempt to balance scholarships).
 
BudatWake said:
Guys-- just have faith in the staff. They have got the program in great shape with some of he best players we have ever had at the skill positions. Few if any would have predicted 7 wins this year. None would have predicted the progress the offense made and no one would have thought we could have some of our best offensive games after losing Dortch and Cade-- the future is bright
Click to expand...

I agree with this. I think you would be foolish to bet against this staff. I’ve said for a couple of years that the first real test for this staff would be the development of Phil Haynes, Jake Benzinger and Alex Bachman. That’s because they were Clawson’s first under-the-radar recruits (and frankly they couldn’t have been any more under-the-radar – I think of them as true zero-star recruits). My thinking has been that if those three recruits panned out then the staff deserved our trust going forward.

One thought that I had this morning is that perhaps we are seeing signs that the staff now has more time and resources devoted to recruiting and they are evaluating more kids and relying less on who other P5 programs are offering. That seems plausible.

So I think the staff deserves our trust. Also some of these kids do look impressive in their highlight packages. But none of that means that we need to push a false narrative that we are using the new facilities to take on and beat other P5 programs in recruiting. Plus, think about this, if we win with guys that were largely overlooked by P5 programs, the story will be that much better and the staff will deserve that much more credit for talent identification and development.

Anyways, here are the stats on % of recruits with 2 or more other P5 offers (updated for the new commits):
2016: 57%
2017: 37%
2018: 25%

But for those of you that just aren’t believers, here is some ammunition for you as well. It’s a link to James Franklin’s “The Sleeper Recruit Does Not Exist Anymore” speech at Sound Mind Sound Body in 2016 (it starts at about the 2:00 mark) https://www.seccountry.com/arkansas/bret-bielema-james-franklin-advise-parents-not-to-pay-for-recruiting-services
 
DEACS76 said:
https://247sports.com/college/wake-forest/Sport/Football/AllTimeRecruits Check out how many of these "Highly Rated" commits did not do much at WF. How many made All ACC?
Click to expand...

Checking up on Laronji Vason, I found this interesting nugget from January 2017:

What was the biggest obstacle in your life you had to overcome, and how did you overcome it?

Not being able to got to wake forest because they didn’t accept 2 of my high school classes and I over came it by not giving up and sticking with the dream of playing ball.

https://www.nfldraftdiamonds.com/laronji-vason-db-university-of-west-georgia/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top