Dave Clawson has been very clear on multiple occasions in the last couple of weeks. Wake Forest has some players not living up to his expectations with regard to production on the field. He has also been clear that at this time of the year, he is prepared to go to some of the younger players on the roster to get them some prime-time action without burning their redshirt year. There will be holes to fill next year, but the academics at Wake truncate the ability to use the transfer portal at a significant level. So some of the youngsters are likely to be counted on sooner than usual. But Wake Forest is seeking a talent infusion before next season.
Going into this year, Clawson was concerned about the defense, and the line in particular. With the loss of experienced starters from 2022, depth was an anticipated issue. But the defensive unit has been the mainstay that has kept Wake Forest in several games this season. A case in point is the linebackers. With Chase Jones out on a weekly basis all season, there was legitimate cause to believe the position was vulnerable. But Dylan Hazen and Jacob Roberts have not missed a beat. The defensive line has had significant play from Jasheen Davis and Kevin Pointer.
Offense Not What They Thought
And then there is the offense. Little has gone right. The quarterbacks have been sporadic at best in terms of running the schemes. And when they do, there is insufficient blocking up front, veteran receivers who don’t make plays, and running backs who miss in pass protection or don’t have holes up front to run through.
“We had scored 30 points [per game] six years in a row. And we had a system,” Clawson said Tuesday. He and his staff are mystified that a group of players that have been in the system for years are struggling so much to run the offense. “We probably, on every offensive position, took a step back. And collectively it’s been a struggle. I didn’t see this coming.”
Something is being lost from the practice field to the games. As they head into week 11 of the season with a trip to Notre Dame, the time for teaching the big picture is gone. Now it is about tweaking the system to figure out who can run what, and plug and play the right pieces at the right time to try to salvage the last two games.
Short-Term and the Longer Path
The difficulties have caused Clawson to take a deeper look at his roster management. Wake never has been and will not be the school that gets the five-star elite recruit who hits the starting lineup in week one. The program was never built that way. And Clawson’s success has come from bringing in the lesser heralded recruits and spending two to three years to develop them before they are deemed ready. But too many of those who spent years developing are the ones not producing now.
The recruiting class for 2024 is reflective of Clawson’s system. There are 19 commits, mostly in the two-to-three-star range. The class ranks 47th on the 247Sports composite. That is Wake Forest to a fine point.
Theoretically, that leaves filling other gaps through the transfer portal. We have reported ad nauseam about Wake’s NIL challenges compared to other Power 5 programs. The money is there more than it used to be, but certainly not in competitively large quantities.
The bigger obstacle it turns out, is Wake’s well-deserved academic standing. It puts a whole other level of constraints on Clawson’s ability to use the portal to make a more competitive and compelling roster.
The Portal Potential vs. The Admissions Conundrum
Clawson explained in detail on Tuesday that you cannot graduate with a degree from Wake Forest with less than 50% of your class credits having been garnered there. Most anyone seeking to transfer in after their sophomore year is wasting their time. Not all of their credits will clear and it will likely cause an extra year at a school that costs $65,000 per year just for tuition.
From a football standpoint, it means that while Clawson can go shopping in the transfer portal market, he won’t be going through the checkout line with anything other than a grad transfer or a freshman who has only spent one year at their previous school. As we monitor the transfer portal weekly, we can say, the pickings are modest.
“We’re never going to be a school that’s able to take a lot of transfers. There’s certainly challenges that we have taking transfers here,” he said. But there is a need for a talent infusion on the roster. “We’ve probably got to be a little more open to being maybe more aggressive in that area for the right player in the right position, so we don’t maybe have the drop off we had this year.”
The grad transfers are short-term rental players. But they fill those gaps while the younger players develop and grow the way Clawson and his staff want. With the freshman transfers, you get what you get. That is often a player who left the previous school when they saw themselves third on a depth chart.
Additions Needed Starting in December
It is also critical to remember that the transfer portal changed this past Summer. Players get one free transfer. After that, they must sit for a year. It means the shelves at the transfer portal emporium aren’t going to be quite as overflowing as they were in previous years. Grad transfers still have total freedom of school movement.
Watching this team struggle at 4-6 and accepting that hope is not a strategy for future success, it makes sense that Clawson needs to be as flexible as the school’s policies allow. “I think right now, you’ve got to be open to anything and everything.”
This doesn’t mean an overhaul in the Dave Clawson philosophy of developing your own players over several years. But it does signal an acknowledgment that the fixes to ward off another year like this can’t wait for the two to three-year development. Shopping at the “portal store” for help in any and all positions will begin well before the holiday rush. The transfer portal window for entering players opens on December 4th. Wake Forest will lose some to the portal but will need some impact pickups.
