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Wake Forest Football Recruiting

I really don't understand how some people can second guess Clawson's ability to recruit at all. I have watched Wake football for 40 years and we have more depth at the key positions than I can ever recall. As we look at next year, my areas are concern are how the backups at QB, LB and TE will progress. Wish we got to see some of Jamie Newman this year, but we look very strong at OL, DL, DB, RB.
 
We haven't been this deep at the skill positions in a long time. I'm concerned about LB and TE but those have traditionally been strong positions at Wake.

The most telling sign that Clawson's recruiting is working is how many rFR and rSO have beaten out more experienced players to get on the 2-deep.
 
WFU1977 said:
I really don't understand how some people can second guess Clawson's ability to recruit at all. I have watched Wake football for 40 years and we have more depth at the key positions than I can ever recall. As we look at next year, my areas are concern are how the backups at QB, LB and TE will progress. Wish we got to see some of Jamie Newman this year, but we look very strong at OL, DL, DB, RB.
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I agree 100%. I do not care how many stars a kid has. I care that he can play. We have seen on some of the "cupcakes" we have played that there are a lot of good players that never had a power 5 offer. Heck the Heisman trophy winner this year went to college as a walk on! How many games have we player recently were we have said after the game, "boy number so and so could really play-- wonder why we didn't offer him" Better to lock up guys before they are "discovered" by a big time school and swoop in and steal him from us. As long as we look as good on the field as we have, I will not question DC's recruiting. This year we had a number of significant injuries that in the past would have derailed us, this year for the first time in a long time, the next man stepped up and played well. Was nice to have some depth for a change! Go Deacs
 
PhDeac said:
We haven't been this deep at the skill positions in a long time. I'm concerned about LB and TE but those have traditionally been strong positions at Wake.

The most telling sign that Clawson's recruiting is working is how many rFR and rSO have beaten out more experienced players to get on the 2-deep.
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Any news on how the freshman linebackers we signed last year are doing during the RS year? I remember being especially pumped about Monroe and Burley
 
Agreed. The hyperventilating needs to stop. We will be green at LB and TE but we have the bodies. We also seem to have talent at QB, time will tell if they match when we had Mauk, Skinner and Hodges on the same team.
 
WFU1977 said:
I really don't understand how some people can second guess Clawson's ability to recruit at all. I have watched Wake football for 40 years and we have more depth at the key positions than I can ever recall. As we look at next year, my areas are concern are how the backups at QB, LB and TE will progress. Wish we got to see some of Jamie Newman this year, but we look very strong at OL, DL, DB, RB.
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Why aren't more P5 coaches taking notice and going after these players that only Clawson can identify as P5-level talent? The current strategy indicates that our staff thinks they are significantly better talent evaluators than every other P5 staff and the recruiting "experts" who do it for a living. Or they think they/Wake are still unable to compete for recruits against other top P5 programs.

If you or a family member had to spend time in the hospital, would you rather it be at one with doctors/residents who had offers from multiple top hospitals/programs in the country, or doctors with offers from just your local hospital, or lower tier hospitals? Somewhat ridiculous metaphor, but you get my point.

I'm excited about the future of our program, but I want Wake to win and be extremely competitive at everything, and that includes recruiting rankings.
 
Success begets success. Lets win the damn bowl game against a known school. 2018 schedule is shaping up in our favor. If one of the 4 eligible QB's can step up a 9 win season is doable. After 3 bowls in a row, we can up our recruiting game. But i prefer the current approach in the meantime.
 
10 years ago when we had our one and only 3 bowls in a row streach, most posters were bemoaning the fact that Grobe did not capitalize. And they were right. The problem was that we concurrently lost our best coaches and replaced them with has-beens or unprovens. No elite offensive player or lineman was ever going to suit up for Lobo et all.
 
PhDeac said:
We haven't been this deep at the skill positions in a long time. I'm concerned about LB and TE but those have traditionally been strong positions at Wake.

The most telling sign that Clawson's recruiting is working is how many rFR and rSO have beaten out more experienced players to get on the 2-deep.
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I think former walk-on TE Jack Freudenthal is going to be one of the biggest surprises on the team next year
 
Do we know how many P5 coaches get verbals from players with no other P5 offers? We seem to be assuming it's only Clawson.

We're focused on Wake recruiting, but it may be far more common.
 
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PhDeac said:
Do we know how many P5 coaches get verbals from players with no other P5 offers? We seem to be assuming it's only Clawson.
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I'm sure someone (not me) could pull together some stats on that - sounds like a Doofus job. It's definitely not only Clawson, but I'd venture a guess that he gets close to the most in the country.
 
tigerswood said:
Why aren't more P5 coaches taking notice and going after these players that only Clawson can identify as P5-level talent? The current strategy indicates that our staff thinks they are significantly better talent evaluators than every other P5 staff and the recruiting "experts" who do it for a living. Or they think they/Wake are still unable to compete for recruits against other top P5 programs.

If you or a family member had to spend time in the hospital, would you rather it be at one with doctors/residents who had offers from multiple top hospitals/programs in the country, or doctors with offers from just your local hospital, or lower tier hospitals? Somewhat ridiculous metaphor, but you get my point.

I'm excited about the future of our program, but I want Wake to win and be extremely competitive at everything, and that includes recruiting rankings.
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Because Clawson is the G.O.A.T.
 
tigerswood said:
I'm sure someone (not me) could pull together some stats on that - sounds like a Doofus job. It's definitely not only Clawson, but I'd venture a guess that he gets close to the most in the country.
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What are the parameters? Has no other P5 offers at all at the time of commitment?
 
Just for reference on Wake, Rank By Offers has yet to update past 15 (so the past few haven't been put on yet) for Wake, but the following '18 guys had no other P5 offers:

Nicolas Sciba (Wake was his only offer)
Zion Keith (UCF offered)
Sam Hartman
Blake Whiteheart
Isaiah Isaac
Nasir Greer

So that's 6/15 guys who committed to Wake with no other P5 offers (most had at least 5 other offers from schools not in the P5).
 
What I deem our peers, although Duke has recruited much better than us lately:

Duke has 1
Cuse has 2
BC has 9
 
Lohengrin said:
This is the key point. Thank you tigerswood. There's more to recruiting than just getting players who can serve their purpose. It's an entire game within a game. A recruiting ranking establishes a program's place in the P5 hierarchy. Some of us, and at least me, have aspired for Wake to become a well regarded mid level FB program and not continue being "the little engine that could". Now if you buy into the old timer rj and bkf mindset of lowf that Wake will never be able to achieve that goal for institutional reasons then, yeah, Wake taking Sunbelt recruits and winning seven games is a great coup. On the other hand, if we have to stoop to that level, not for one or two overlooked prospects but for the bread and butter of our team, we have not really achieved anything. We have not elevated our *program*. I will see success when (a) it is sustained over at least a decade and across multiple coaches; and (b) we are recruiting players at a moderately high level according to outside recruiting standards. I don't want to dignify comments such as those from UVa's smug coach that "Wake does a good job given their unique little recruiting base." I want US to establish a level playing field. We don't necessarily need the facilities we're building to secure the players we're currently signing. The facilities don't hurt, obviously, but they are not being used to elevate us into the P5 mainstream.
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Agreed, and what concerns me about recruiting this year is the timing of the commits with few to no offers. It makes me think this was last resort due to missing on the players with multiple P5 offers they had recruited and missed on, as opposed to being their strategy from the beginning. People can sugar coat it all day, but we missed on guys with lots of offers and settled in my opinion. As I mentioned before, clawson does deserve a ton of credit for finding unde the radar types that often do pan out, and so I do give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s still concerning looking at the number of guys we are taking with no offers.
 
tigerswood said:
Why aren't more P5 coaches taking notice and going after these players that only Clawson can identify as P5-level talent? The current strategy indicates that our staff thinks they are significantly better talent evaluators than every other P5 staff and the recruiting "experts" who do it for a living. Or they think they/Wake are still unable to compete for recruits against other top P5 programs.

If you or a family member had to spend time in the hospital, would you rather it be at one with doctors/residents who had offers from multiple top hospitals/programs in the country, or doctors with offers from just your local hospital, or lower tier hospitals? Somewhat ridiculous metaphor, but you get my point.

I'm excited about the future of our program, but I want Wake to win and be extremely competitive at everything, and that includes recruiting rankings.
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A big difference is short term vs long term view. If you're looking for a surgeon to operate today, you want a doctor who's experienced and ready to go.....now. Many schools recruit players who are capable of playing as freshmen.....and want to play as freshmen. Clawson is taking a longer term view to find players that need a few years to develop, but who can be fully capable and competitive at that time. It's also different players that understand this concept and strategy.
So far, Clawson and his staff seem to be pretty good at identifying those players, as well as developing them. Our Oline is a great example. Next season, it will be one of our strengths. Nobody would have believed His 2 years ago or even last year.
 
I get that recruiting rankings are fun to watch and always fun when Wake lands one (I remember Rocky Reid’s flip to Wake was a blast to watch unfold). But here are a few comments:

- Recruiting rankings become less and less effective/accurate the further away you get from the #1 overall prospect. This is for a lot of reasons... one is because it’s easy to project guys who have such God given abilities that it’d take a blind guy not to be able to see it. For instance, I contend it was pretty easy to tell Jadaveon Clowney was going to be playing on Sundays when he was 18. Another reason is that the top 100-200 players in the rankings get a lot more publicity. Often times this publicity builds on itself and people think they’re getting publicity because they’re good, when sometimes it’s because one evaluator liked a kid during one camp session when that kid was a sophomore. It can become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another reason is that projecting development is really, really hard. There are a lot of guys that after 4-5 years of training and development will turn into star performers, but many scouts never would’ve been able to guess that looking at them in high school (hi Kevin Johnson). By the time you get to prospects ranked above 300 (247 ranks kids past 1,000!), they’re just throwing darts. There’s a very good chance a recruiting “expert” has never seen the kid live, especially playing a real game.
- Recruiting “experts” are often times just sports journalists. Yes, they watch a lot of football and some have even played. But it’s incredible how few have ever coached, especially at a high level. If you’ve never spent time around a college staff preparing for a game, then you just can’t quite appreciate how much detail goes into evaluating players. It’s just different than watching highlights and looking at offer lists.
- I think a lot of people need to step back and ask themselves this question: what’s the ultimate point of following recruiting rankings? Is it to win some arbitrary list? Because if that’s why you follow, prepare to be disappointed forever. Large schools with large subscriber bases are always going to get the benefit of the doubt, Wake won’t.
- Which leads to another question: if Wake is successful on the field with 80 zero-star recruits, do the rankings matter at all?
 
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I would rather have a kid that no one's heard of, than a kid who has offers only from schools like Illinois, Kansas, Baylor and Oregon St. The only thing that matters is what they do once they arrive at Wake. Press clippings never made a tackle. Being selected All-State doesn't finish the block for you. Our coaches can see what these kids will be like in 2 years, and that they fit into the Wake system. Make Wake a Diva free zone!
 
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