{"id":45860,"date":"2022-09-08T17:00:33","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T21:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=45860"},"modified":"2025-09-13T16:20:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:20:48","slug":"wake-forest-meets-vanderbilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2022\/09\/08\/wake-forest-meets-vanderbilt\/","title":{"rendered":"Wake Forest Meets Vanderbilt"},"content":{"rendered":"

There will be familiar faces as Wake Forest meets Vanderbilt this weekend in Nashville. The return of Sam Hartman<\/strong> to quarterback for the Demon Deacons has been well-chronicled. Wake linebacker Ryan Smenda<\/strong> will take the field for the first time this season after a dubious one-game suspension from last season\u2019s bowl game. But there are also the handshakes and chatter that will take place with the coaches before the game.<\/p>\n

Recognizable Faces<\/h3>\n

Wake head coach Dave Clawson<\/strong> is heading to Nashville to coach against one of his former assistants, Clark Lea<\/strong>, the second-year head coach at Vanderbilt. Lea was the linebackers coach for Clawson at Bowling Green in 2012, and then again at Wake Forest in 2016. Clawson called Lea, \u201cVery smart and a strategic thinker.\u201d<\/p>\n

One source of inspiration for being a strategic thinker likely came from another Clawson assistant who will undoubtedly be chatting with Lea. The Vandy coach waxed poetic this week about his relationship with Wake Forest offensive coordinator Warren Ruggiero<\/strong>. The two would room together when they were working the camp circuit in Ohio during their time at Bowling Green. \u201cWarren would be awake every morning at five to have his coffee. And he\u2019d have his yellow legal pad out. I would always ask what he was doing. Well, he was always drawing up plays. It took me some time to realize his genius in play design.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the early innovation of what is now Wake\u2019s slow mesh offense. Lea called it a challenge to defend because it is unlike most other offenses in the country. \u201cWake Forest is about explosive plays and scoring points,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve done it through a high-powered offense.\u201d He said he has been preaching to his defense this week that the key to playing against the Wake offense is patience. \u201cThere are ways to make an aggressive call that keep you within the structure. There are also ways to be reckless. And when you\u2019re reckless with this team and this offense they wind up in the end zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Here And Now Of Vanderbilt<\/h3>\n

The Commodores are 2-0 coming off a blowout win at Hawai\u2019i and victory over Elon last week that was much closer than it should have been at 42-31.<\/p>\n

Lea said while his team is experienced in terms of years, it is maybe not so when it comes to playing with big leads. That made the Elon game a new learning experience. \u00a0\u201cWe didn\u2019t close the game out,\u201d he said earlier this week. \u201cIt was a result of us letting off the gas. And it was us not playing to our identity as we did against Hawai\u2019i. The scoreboard lies to you. So, it\u2019s human nature to soften once you felt you\u2019ve built a lead. And elite teams don\u2019t do that. We\u2019ve got to learn to fight through that psychologically and closeout.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vandy has the ability to put the points on the board. Third-year quarterback Mike Wright<\/a> already has six throwing touchdowns and four more on the ground. While he is not being asked to put the ball up a lot, he\u2019s throwing at a 62% completion rate with zero interceptions. He is averaging a little more than 10-yards per carry en route to 250 yards rushing in two games.<\/p>\n

Clawson and Wake\u2019s defense have certainly taken notice. \u201cHe has breakaway speed. He\u2019s got legit speed.\u201d Defensive lineman Rondell Bothroyd<\/a> has watched the film on Wright and said, \u201cHe\u2019s probably the fastest quarterback we play. He\u2019s smart, and they\u2019re all well coached,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we let him, he can run all over us. We\u2019ve got to keep him contained.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stop The Flags<\/h3>\n

Something Clawson wants to see contained is the penalty flags coming out of the game officials\u2019 pockets. Several days after the season-opening win against VMI, Clawson was still visibly bothered by the seven penalties for 70 yards amassed by the Demon Deacons. And upon watching the game film, he said there probably could have been a couple more called. \u201cThe sloppiness came from too many penalties,\u201d he said earlier this week.<\/p>\n

He said in his analysis, that the holding penalties on offense cost Wake two touchdowns and a two-point conversion. There was also a roughing the passer penalty on defense that negated a pick-six by Isaiah Wingfield<\/strong>. In repeating what he said immediately after the game last Thursday, he referred to them as \u201cUndisciplined penalties.\u201d He added, \u201cIt\u2019s just not smart football. Those become selfish penalties.\u201d He was referring specifically to the roughing the passer penalties. \u201cYou\u2019re frustrated you didn\u2019t get there, so you\u2019re going to take a shot.\u201d\u00a0 The message to the team could not be clearer. \u201cMy job as the head coach is to make sure those things don\u2019t happen. And if they continue to happen, we can\u2019t play those players that have those types of mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of his comments, Lea was unaware that Hartman would be returning to the Wake offense this week. It may not have mattered in his analysis. \u201cThey\u2019ll change subtlety in personality depending upon who the quarterback is,\u201d he said. \u201cBut this is a system. It seems like anyone that they have put back at quarterback has found success and rhythm in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wright versus Hartman and Wake Forest versus Vandy kicks off at noon eastern on Saturday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There will be familiar faces as Wake Forest meets Vanderbilt this weekend in Nashville. The return of Sam Hartman to quarterback for the Demon Deacons has been well-chronicled. Wake linebacker Ryan Smenda will take the field for the first time this season after a dubious one-game suspension from last season\u2019s bowl game. But there are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":45861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,3,35580],"tags":[4817,8099,1135,4207,20,96,1249,8871],"class_list":["post-45860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-featured","category-sec","category-vanderbilt-commodores","tag-acc-football","tag-clark-lea","tag-dave-clawson","tag-sam-hartman","tag-sec","tag-vanderbilt-commodores","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-warren-ruggiero"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79656,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45860\/revisions\/79656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}