Wake Forest has double duty this week. The Demon Deacons have to prepare for a 2-0 Vanderbilt coming into Allegacy Stadium. And then, as part of the preparation, there is some clean-up in aisle five to be done, (or pick any supermarket aisle you want).
Cleaning Up After the Win
Even as Wake is coming off an as-expected win over FCS Elon last Thursday, head coach Dave Clawson says there are a lot of things that need to be cleaned up this week in preparing for the Commodores. “On offense, we got off to a good start, and after that, it was very uneven,” Clawson said at his weekly press conference Tuesday.
Wake put up 427 yards of offense against Elon. But the balance was not there. Quarterback Mitch Griffis was 19 of 30 throwing for 329 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception. But the running game continues to struggle to produce at a high level. Wake Forest netted 98 yards on the ground on 35 carries. That average per carry of under three yards is a long way from the explosive running game Clawson emphasized in Fall camp. “Like I said after the game, I was disappointed we didn’t run the ball consistently. But Elon was sticking that safety in there right at two yards.”
Getting Through the First Week
And then there are just the first-game mistakes that happen for most teams and are part of the reason Wake opens against these types of opponents. “All 11 guys weren’t coordinated,” Clawson said of his offense from Thursday night. “I never felt like we really settled in and we made some game-one mistakes that are going to cost us down the line if we don’t correct them.”
Clawson said he has never walked out of those early season games against similar opponents feeling great. He called them unwinnable games. Wake Forest is supposed to win, so the challenges are based on the granular details of the win. And then goodness help a coach who does not win those games. “We’re going to get a much better idea in the coming weeks of what we have here,” he said.
Vanderbilt
That gets us to Vandy. The two teams met last year in week two, with Wake Forest coming away with a 45-25 win in Nashville. “Vanderbilt is a much different team than they were a year ago,” he said. For starters, they have two wins in two weeks after getting to only five all of last season. The Commodores have back-to-back wins at home against Hawai’i and Alabama A&M. Clawson described Vandy as a team that now has an identity on offense.
Quarterback A.J. Swann is part of that identity. He rotated in and out early last season. Now it is his offense to run. With that as the case, the Vanderbilt offense is still only averaging 379 yards of total offense per game going into week three. Swann is a 57% passer who has thrown for 452 yards and five touchdowns with one interception.
Vanderbilt’s head coach Clark Lea, said of his team’s performance last week, “Offensively we struggled to get into a rhythm; I thought we were hot and cold in the first half,” he said. If there is a similarity between the two teams, it’s that neither is running the ball particularly well right now. Neither has a 100-yard rusher this season. Of course, the comparisons there stretch credulity. Wake has played one game. Vandy has two under its belt and still does not have a running back with 100 yards on the season.
Lea of course also paid tribute to Clawson, a coach he considers a mentor. “Wake Forest has kind of been the standard bearer for developmental programs,” he said. “Dave Clawson is as good as they come with respect to having an identity, playing to a strategy, and growing a program.”
Check Your Local Listings for the TV Show
Part of Clawson’s identity is never shying away from big-picture college football topics. You would be hard-pressed to find a college football coach who likes the new rule for 2023 that keeps the clock running after first downs, except in the last two minutes of a half. Add Clawson to the growing list of vocal dissenters when it comes to the rule.
The rule was implemented ostensibly to cut down on plays and thus to cut down on injuries. The sample size two weeks in is too small to bear out any real data. But the TV timeouts that do exist during the half are being extended. UCLA head coach, for his halftime media interview last week said only, “I hope you guys sold more commercials,” on his way to the locker room.
Clawson estimates that the running clock is costing Wake Forest about 10-15 plays per game over what they have historically run. In the Elon game, both teams officially ran 65 plays. Clawson said Tuesday that it cost him getting some snaps for some of the players that he is trying to get some experience.
Flow and Purpose
He was asked if the change in the clock altered the coaching flow in calling the game. “Everything now is done for the TV show,” he responded. “The hypocrisy of this saying it’s for player safety and then they throw in more games,” he added. “We have the same number of players who practice the same amount of time and then they get to play less. I’m not a fan of it. But my vote doesn’t count. Coaches’ votes don’t count on anything having to do with football.”
He acknowledged that the schools benefit from the TV revenue. But he also said, “I just feel like so much of my time spent out there was during TV breaks.” And he added, “You can’t make adjustments because you have to go speak to the TV people.”
He said speeding up the pace of the offense is not the answer, saying that at some point you are going fast just for the sake of going fast. Wake’s offense, to some degree, is built on the threat of going fast, and Clawson said the idea of speeding up from that just to get more plays in causes mistakes.
And if there still is any doubt as to his perspective on the rule and its purpose, he said early in the press conference, “We have Vanderbilt at home. 11 am. That’s what time the TV show starts.”
Photo courtesy: Alan Poizner / USA TODAY NETWORK
