Bachmeier<\/a>. Hailing from Southern California, he spent the first four years in college at Boise State, often playing in the snow and freezing temperatures on the \u201cSmurf Turf.\u201d He played last year at Louisiana Tech, where he had the highest completion rate of his career.<\/p>\nAs Clawson stays with his renovated practice plans of running the live scrimmages on both fields simultaneously, it gives him the newfound luxury of running each quarterback with \u201cones\u201d and with the \u201ctwos.\u201d Ideally, it would give him a sense of who can command the offense and who can execute it.<\/p>\n
Not Coach Speak, But a Real Competition<\/h3>\n
Last week at ACC media days, Clawson said this is a real and open competition. \u201cWe told Michael if he came back he\u2019d have a chance to compete for the job. We told Hank if he came to Wake Forest he\u2019d have a chance to compete for the job.\u201d It is the play of the two that will determine the final decision as to the starter. And Clawson has said he will not create a false timeline to make that decision.<\/p>\n
In his fill-in role last year, Kern threw a total of only 92 passes for 647 yards, four touchdowns, and two interceptions. It was the most activity he had seen at Wake. The year before, behind Hartman and Griffis he attempted only six passes. So with 2023 as his high water mark, he has a 60% career completion rate for 1,023 yards, five touchdowns, and two interceptions.<\/p>\n
Bachmeier is more of a known entity on the national landscape. He was a four-star recruit coming out of Murrietta, CA near San Diego. He threw for more than 6,600 yards in four years at Boise State with 41 touchdowns and 19 interceptions. Last year at LA Tech, he completed a career-high 67% of his passes for 2,058 yards, 10 touchdowns and five interceptions.<\/p>\n
The criticism of the stats in his career has been the touchdown touchdown-to-interception ratio. Bachmeier has a good arm and has been known to try to thread passes that are not \u201cthreadable.\u201d<\/p>\n
From The QB Perspective<\/h3>\n
We talked to both quarterbacks earlier this week. Kern, in his typical low-key fashion, called it fun and talked about \u201cattacking it every day.\u201d He expressly said he has complete faith in Clawson and offensive coordinator Warren Ruggiero to do whatever is needed to help Wake win games. \u201cI trust that they are doing everything to make that happen,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I am going to do my part to make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said during the Summer the quarterbacks were working out with the receivers at least three times a week.<\/p>\n
Kern said he is learning a lot from Bachmeier. \u201cHank is really smart. He has played a lot of football, so I love having conversations with him in the film room,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s making me a better quarterback.<\/p>\n
Bachmeier reciprocates those thoughts. \u201cI ask him (Kern) a ton of questions. He\u2019s been in the system for five years, so the guy knows everything there is to know about the offense,\u201d Bachmeier said. \u201cHe\u2019s got such a vast knowledge of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bachmeier also lent credence to the reports that he had not been promised anything in terms of a starting role when he transferred to Wake Forest. \u201cCoach Clawson has been completely transparent. Coach R has been completely transparent. And I completely understand that nothing is going to be given to me. I wouldn\u2019t want it any other way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Real Competition<\/h3>\n
Now the competition is not restricted to the football field. Last week we got wind of some team bonding events during the Summer that became competitions on their own. They took the form of teams being put together for bowling, wiffle ball, and other events. So how did Bachmeier and Kern do? The agreements end there.<\/p>\n
Kern says he had the best wiffle ball on-base percentage on the team throughout the competition. Bachmeier was unimpressed. \u201cWe had the smallest team, (Michael Frogge, Tyler Mizzell, and Jaydn Girard with Bachmeier). We had the least amount of players and we went all the way to the championship with four guys. The other teams had nine guys. Our collective team was the best team.\u201d<\/p>\n
He refuted Kern\u2019s claim that there were some disputable calls during the wiffle ball tournament. \u201cAll I\u2019m saying is we had a Cinderella run,\u201d Bachmeier claimed. Bachmeier\u2019s team also won the Summer long bowling tournament, a claim not disputed by Kern. \u201cSo, if you look at the overall cup standings Team Frogge and Bachmeier was up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the season opener being at home against North Carolina A&T, we will likely see both quarterbacks trying to claim their stake that night as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last year Wake Forest went into Fall camp with Mitch Griffis already ordained as the starting quarterback. It didn\u2019t go well. Before that, it was a given that it was Sam Hartman\u2019s job, and it went mostly well. So we are in relatively new territory as there is a Demon Deacons quarterback battle in camp. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":61826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_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":[2,7],"tags":[102,1135,5224,8925,1249,8871],"class_list":["post-61822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-acc","tag-acc","tag-dave-clawson","tag-hank-bachmeier","tag-michael-kern","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-warren-ruggiero"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61822","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=61822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}