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Wake Forest Football Recruiting

OL and Defense. This team has more depth at QB, RB, and WR.
 
whodatdeac said:
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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Excellent!

We tend to forget that the coaches have a scheme for both offense and defense. The really good coaches recruit for their schemes. They know what they have and what they need to make their schemes work and recruit accordingly. Additionally, because football is such an intensely team oriented sport, great talents who are selfish and are not team players may actually hurt a team more than help a team. And if they are not motivated students, they may prove to be a serious drain on the academic assistance resources.

And at the end of the day, the coaches know that their jobs depend on their ability to recognize and develop talent. They have a bit more at stake than those who evaluate their recruits by watching clips and reading analyses.
 
Jim Grobe once said that some 4 and 5 star recruits couldn’t play dead in a cowboy movie. When we played App. St. this year, I didn’t notice any appreciable difference in the talent levels of the teams. MAC schools beat P5 schools pretty often. Troy beat LSU this year. There are a lot of quality football players out there who are not 4 or 5 star guys, or even high 3 star. We get a few players who are recruited by NCSU, Duke, UNC, VT, GT, etc, but almost none who are recruited by the likes of Clemson, Georgia and Alabama. Most of our players have always been under the radar guys and it’s not likely to change much given our size, alumni base and academic requirements.
 
mebanedeac said:
Excellent!

We tend to forget that the coaches have a scheme for both offense and defense. The really good coaches recruit for their schemes. They know what they have and what they need to make their schemes work and recruit accordingly. Additionally, because football is such an intensely team oriented sport, great talents who are selfish and are not team players may actually hurt a team more than help a team. And if they are not motivated students, they may prove to be a serious drain on the academic assistance resources.

And at the end of the day, the coaches know that their jobs depend on their ability to recognize and develop talent. They have a bit more at stake than those who evaluate their recruits by watching clips and reading analyses.
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Well said. The coaches have spoken to the players, and know the gym rats from the mice.
 
tigerswood said:
I mean, by all accounts, Stanford has the same level of expectations as Wake, if not higher in terms of academics, character, etc, and they are able to reel in top 20 classes in the country. We've got a really long way to go before we can start comparing Wake football to Stanford, but shouldn't we aspire for that level of success?
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I think you’re onto something! If we just dream big and try really hard we can do whatever we put our minds to!
 
DEACS76 said:
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.
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Run that by me just one more time now
 
DEACS76 said:
[/B]
Well said. The coaches have spoken to the players, and know the gym rats from the mice.
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How is that not a popular sports colloquialism? That's really good.
 
whodatdeac said:
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?
Click to expand...

So why do the teams with the most 4* and 5* recruits win the most games? Or are you saying they don't?
 
macktheknife said:
So why do the teams with the most 4* and 5* recruits win the most games? Or are you saying they don't?
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Coaching. That's why the SEC has fired most of their coaches over the past 5 years, except for the Nicktator.
 
DEACS76 said:
Coaching. That's why the SEC has fired most of their coaches over the past 5 years, except for the Nicktator.
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So Alabama wins with superior coaching and his 4 and 5 star recruits are a sideshow for the fans that follow recruiting? I'm not bitching about our recruiting. It is what it is. We are winning at a little over 50% of our games. About exactly where you would expect to be with our recruiting. I would also say I think Clawson gets the maximum out of our recruits which is what makes him a great coach and program builder. I also think we will see the level of recruiting rise over time. People can say the rating system of high school football players is a fraud if they wish, but the evidence says otherwise. In addition, the citing of one and two star players that became All Conference players as evidence the rating system is a fraud is ridiculous.
 
High 4s and 5s are the top 100-200 players that are pretty obviously the cream of the crop. Once you start getting down farther it becomes more of a crapshoot and development becomes more important.

I have no idea what Clawson's recruiting strategy is, but it seems strange that he wouldn't have the ability to recruit as well as he did 2 or 3 years ago with success and facilities, so it must be a choice in the kind of player he is targeting.
 
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If y’all think Clawson chooses not to sign 4* and 5* kids, you’re all lunatics.
 
There are a lot of kids that end up at troy and elsewhere that barely got thru high school. That is the only reason they aren't p5.

Lot of weird theories last few pages. I think a lot of the 2 stars that become great college players were simply late bloomers either football wise or puberty wise. Every kid that gets a bama scholly are full grown men. We take some kids whom we anticipate being full grown men in 2+ years. Amari henderson for example. I think some of you are over thinking this
 
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I would like to see the (assumed negative) correlstion between #stars and high school GPA. I expect that the pool of 4 and 5 stars capable of graduating from wake is pretty small. Lets face it, Stanford will get first dibs. Our goal should be to hold our own vs Duke, Northwestern, Vandy for the rest. But there wont be enough to field a team for any of these 4 schools.
 
I love DC and hope he wins every game, but some of the hot takes on this thread are amazing.

- DC is a helluva coach and will win a certain number of games, based many different factors - a critical one being how well the program has recruited over the last 4 to 5 years.

- If DC gets better recruits over the long-term, he will win more games.

- Our recent recruiting rankings have fallen off - (someone noted the decline earlier in the thread and having 6 of 15 recruits with no other P5 offers is not good)

- While recruiting rankings are not perfect indicators of how well a recruit will play, a drop in recruiting class rankings or more recruits without other P5 offers is certainly a reason to be concerned.

Hopefully, DC can continue developing players and winning games on the field. If he does that, the higher rated recruits will follow.
 
91deac said:
I love DC and hope he wins every game, but some of the hot takes on this thread are amazing.

- DC is a helluva coach and will win a certain number of games, based many different factors - a critical one being how well the program has recruited over the last 4 to 5 years.

- If DC gets better recruits over the long-term, he will win more games.

- Our recent recruiting rankings have fallen off - (someone noted the decline earlier in the thread and having 6 of 15 recruits with no other P5 offers is not good)

- While recruiting rankings are perfect indicators of how well a recruit will play, a drop in recruiting class rankings or more recruits without other P5 offers is certainly a reason to be concerned.

Hopefully, DC can continue developing players and winning games on the field. If he does that, the higher rated recruits will follow.
Click to expand...

Yep. This is well summed-up.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
If y’all think Clawson chooses not to sign 4* and 5* kids, you’re all lunatics.
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Nobody thinks this.

We would all take 4-5 star prospects if we could land them.

I think folks are getting bent out of shape on how we are utilizing our final scholarships heading into the early NSD period. For all we know these are guys that Clawson has had his eye on for a long time and wanted to offer when we got closer to NSD to keep teams away.

Would I rather get all 3 stars and up? Of course, it has been proven over and over again over time that the higher the recruiting class, the better your team is (generally speaking). That does not, however, mean that there are not exceptions.

Do I believe that Coach Clawson has some magical ability to find kids who are really under-the-radar that no other coach in D1 has? Absolutely not, but I do like his overall recruiting strategy and it has worked well so far.

To get to the next step we probably will need to recruit at a higher level than we are right now, and I am sure that Coach Clawson knows that, but it also takes time. If we can win 9-10 games next year somehow then it opens the door for those guys. Rome wasn't built in a day and I trust Clawson to get us to where we need to be because he has done that at every other program and he has us on the correct trajectory now.
 
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