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Wake Forest Football Recruiting

Deacsfan27 said:
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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Also, agree with this post. When you're talking about program trajectory, I absolutely agree we're on the right track.

My problem is with recruiting trajectory. If winning more games, making bowls, gaining recognition, etc. should translate to better recruits (as you indicate), then why aren't we seeing those results yet? To a much lesser extent, it does remind me of the post-Orange Bowl recruiting years under Grobe.
 
tigerswood said:
Also, agree with this post. When you're talking about program trajectory, I absolutely agree we're on the right track.

My problem is with recruiting trajectory. If winning more games, making bowls, gaining recognition, etc. should translate to better recruits (as you indicate), then why aren't we seeing those results yet? To a much lesser extent, it does remind me of the post-Orange Bowl recruiting years under Grobe.
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In 2015, 9 of our 22 commits on Rivals were 2 stars. (FTR, those two stars included Phil Haynes, Justin Strnad, Elontae Bateman, and Jessie Bates, while Kyle Kearns, Steve Claude, and Rocky Reid were our three highest-rated commits). In 2016, 6 of 21 were 2 stars. In 2017, 10 of 20 were 2 stars. So far this year, 6 of 21 are 2 stars, including Anthony Manning, who isn't rated. Everybody would love to be pulling in higher-rated recruits, but the hand-wringing on this thread is a little excessive
 
Grobe recruiting actually went up post Orange Bowl and we had a huge bust year we had all those Neese offensive lineman with big time offers and the defensive lineman with an Alabama offer. That class on paper looks great and turned out terrible
 
Past 5 year average rating for the recruiting class according to 247Sports:

2018 - 83.49
2017 - 82.69
2016 - 83.19
2015 - 82.98
2014 - 81.80

These things take time and there hasn't exactly been a falling off of talent.
 
WF's highest rated recruit in 2013 was a highly rated 3 star with multiple Power V offers was Lance Virgile (decommitted from L'ville to choose WF over a ton of top Power V schools; not sure what happened to him, but he was never a major contributor).
WF's highest rated recruit in 2014 was a highly rated 3 star with multiple Power V offers was Reshawn Shaw (transferred to FAU; not sure how much he plays)
WF's highest rated recruit in 2015 was a highly rated 3 star (#22 QB) who committed to SMU, and then flirted with Michigan and Cal before committed to WF - Kyle Kearns

Along those lines, invite everyone with an interest to take a look at WF recruiting classes under Clawson; essentially every year the bottom half of the class with the less impressive offer list have turned out to be the better contributors to the program (e.g., Ryan Anderson, Willie Yarbary, Jaboree Willliams, Greg Dortch, Jesse Bates, Jake Benzinger, Justin Strnad, Alex Bachman, Essang Bassey, Boogie Basham, Ja'Sir Taylor, Sean Maginn, Coby Davis and Jake Simpson - the four bolded are the 4 class of 2017 recruits that played as true frosh).

Saying this does not mean that WF intentionally avoids highly rated recruits or refuses to recruit against Power V schools. Obviously, DC wants the best recruits possible. With that said, he does not need the affirmation that a recruit is coveted by other Power V schools to sign him. If DC thinks a recruit can play, he will go after him if he is offered by L'ville, NC State and Georgia Tech or if he is offered by Mercer, FIU and App State. The point is not that WF only looks for players that are under the radar, but just because a recruit is under the radar does not serve as basis for exclusion for WF football, and past history shows that those recruits have turned out to be some of the best players in the program.

The bigger point is that recruiting rankings, under Clawson, have not served as any indicator of whether a WF recruit will become a major contributor or not. So, recruiting rankings, generally, do not appear to be an accurate predictive measure for WF football.
 
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If you're happy with the improvement on the field, be happy with recruiting.
 
PhDeac said:
If you're happy with the improvement on the field, be happy with recruiting.
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Isn't this a change in philosophy for you? IIRC you've been a strong defender of the importance of stars in the past. What's changed?
 
Neurodeac said:
Isn't this a change in philosophy for you? IIRC you've been a strong defender of the importance of stars in the past. What's changed?
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I'm happy with the improvement on the field. So I'm happy with recruiting. Recruiting is a means to an end.

I still think stars are important overall. But I've also thought for a long time that there has to be a way to use available data to find holes in the system. There are players that the recruiting services miss like 2* players who become P5 starters or G5 All-Conference players. These may be players from underrecruited areas and high schools. Or maybe they're young for their grade. For example, Dortch was born May 29, 1998. He didn't turn 18 until the end of his senior year of HS. I'm really excited by the Northwestern algorithm.
 
The difference between 2 and 3 stars is pretty low in subsequent performance on an average basis. This is where talent evaluation and development can really shine.
 
Pilchard said:
BTW, anyone with an interest in football recruiting should watch the last couple minutes of Clawson' December 8 presser when he has asked about the new December singing deadline. Dude is not happy.

http://www.wakeforestsports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/120817aaa.html

He has been recruiting his arse off.
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Listening now. Note at the beginning he talks about Texas A&M's facilities translating to top recruiting classes. He clearly doesn't disavow the causal relationship or the star system.

Interesting that he mentions Notre Dame twice as a de facto member of the ACC.

We still don't know how the early signing period will end up. He may like the results. I do agree that juniors doing official visits in the Spring is ridiculous.
 
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ChrisL68 said:
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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All of this. Exactly.
 
PhDeac said:
I'm happy with the improvement on the field. So I'm happy with recruiting. Recruiting is a means to an end.

I still think stars are important overall. But I've also thought for a long time that there has to be a way to use available data to find holes in the system. There are players that the recruiting services miss like 2* players who become P5 starters or G5 All-Conference players. These may be players from underrecruited areas and high schools. Or maybe they're young for their grade. For example, Dortch was born May 29, 1998. He didn't turn 18 until the end of his senior year of HS. I'm really excited by the Northwestern algorithm.
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I agree with you. Back when we had discussions on the percentage of success for the levels of star ratings, I thought that both arguments had merit and the truth lay somewhere in the middle. I wonder if Grobe bowed to peer pressure in his higher rated classes post OB and didn't evaluate them as well. Or maybe other factors sabotaged those classes. Or a combination. We'll probably never know.
 
Meanwhile.......any news or updates about recruits?
 
People have said that Grobe got lazy in recruiting. I don't know the details, but I do know that we seemed to rely heavily on Jax and a few other key areas. The post-OB era was also the start of YouTube and social media so there were fewer diamonds in the rough. Maybe Grobe just went hard after obvious 3* and 4* targets without doing the legwork to see who was the best fit.

One thing that is clear is that Grobe essentially had one really strong 18 month recruiting period that brought in the key players from the three year bowl stretch. Aside from that, recruiting was mediocre to decent on defense and just poor on offense. The strongest periods for Grobe were with Caldwell's recruits and his first class (Barclay and Plack) and that 18 month stretch that included the FRESH DEACS. It's worth noting that some of those Caldwell players lasted in the NFL longer than the FRESH DEACS.
 
It's an interesting narrative that Grobe stopped recruiting but idk how true that is. Would be interesting to look at.

Of guys who made All-ACC First or Second Team:

Wolford, Serigne, Anderson (I guess you could go half and half since he was signed after Grobe got here), Weaver (who I had no idea was 26 years old), Ejiofor were all Grobe guys.

Dorth was obviously Clawson.
 
Weaver is one of our most underrated Deacs. He's been a reliable kicker for four years, but we've never considered him to be as "automatic" as he is. Honestly, we've taken good kicking for granted for years now.
 
PhDeac said:
If you're happy with the improvement on the field, be happy with recruiting.
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This. Recruiting is a means to an end. If Clawson continues to build teams that produce more wins I'm happy. Last year's team won seven games total. This years team won seven games with an opportunity for eight. If the Deacs win the Belk Bowl the standard for next year is eight wins with an opportunity for nine. If not, the standard for next year to show improvement is seven wins and a bowl win. No excuses.
 
OldGoldBeard said:
In 2015, 9 of our 22 commits on Rivals were 2 stars. (FTR, those two stars included Phil Haynes, Justin Strnad, Elontae Bateman, and Jessie Bates, while Kyle Kearns, Steve Claude, and Rocky Reid were our three highest-rated commits). In 2016, 6 of 21 were 2 stars. In 2017, 10 of 20 were 2 stars. So far this year, 6 of 21 are 2 stars, including Anthony Manning, who isn't rated. Everybody would love to be pulling in higher-rated recruits, but the hand-wringing on this thread is a little excessive
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Why do you call questioning the recruiting trajectory "hand-wringing"? I haven't seen anyone saying "the end is near". Just adding a "speed bump" to those proclaiming the era of "no stars recruiting" and how fraudulent the whole ranking system is. That's much worse than what you call "hand-wringing". The pseudo-defensive comments on this issue are the ones that are unhinged.
 
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