As Wake Forest has passed the halfway mark of the season, head coach Jake Dickert has some extra time to assess the performance of his team. The Demon Deacons have their second bye week of the season this week. That means some time off for the players and a lot of analysis for the coaches.<\/p>\n
With the team sitting at 4-2, starting next week at home against SMU, the Deacs are going to have to grind through six straight weeks to get to the end of the season.<\/p>\n
At the halfway point last season, Wake Forest was 2-4. The Deacs would even their record with wins over UConn and Stanford before dropping four straight games to finish at 4-8 for the second consecutive season.<\/p>\n
Dickert said Thursday that even with the comparative success, there is still a lot of work going on during the bye week. \u201cWe can\u2019t just pass time. We are already focused on SMU,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s much to clean up,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019re happy, but we\u2019re not satisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n
The players have gotten in workouts this week and will have had two days of competitive practice before having Saturday off. Sunday begins film study of SMU (the Mustangs play Clemson Saturday), and a regular game preparation week.<\/p>\n
But that also means a lot of work during the bye week for the coaches. \u201cWe\u2019ve got improvement plans for everybody in our organization,\u201d Dickert said. We asked, and the answer is yes, that includes the coaching staff. While he wouldn\u2019t get into specifics, \u201cWe\u2019re still working through some of those,\u201d he added that there is a lot of work to do on the red zone execution and third down conversions, as examples. \u201cWe need to put those guys in better situations to go out there and execute. That\u2019s from a staff standpoint.\u201d He went through a list of specifics that he is happy with, adding the caveat that there is room for improvement on all of them. \u201cThat falls on us as coaches to really create a vision and not just say, \u2018Hey, we\u2019ve got this extra time, let\u2019s just hang out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re looking for the elements Dickert is pleased with to any varying degree, you can look to pass protection, the defensive front, the defense as a whole, not giving up explosive plays, and kick the return team. For what it\u2019s worth, the punt return unit was the one group still working after practice as we talked with Dickert. That tells you who wasn\u2019t making the list of things that are going right.<\/p>\n
One unit of the team that gets particular praise from Dickert is the defensive line. \u201cI\u2019m going to be honest,\u201d he said. \u201cWe thought these guys were good. But some of these guys are playing above their talent level, and that\u2019s just awesome to see. And they\u2019re not done growing and getting better.\u201d Dickert talked about the coaching they are getting from defensive coordinator Scottie Hazleton. \u201cWay better than I ever did as a [defensive] coordinator of letting these guys go play some football, and the multiple defensive fronts is causing some people problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Robbie Ashford and Deshawn Purdie<\/a> have been active at practice this week. Dickert talked about Purdie\u2019s game in the win over Oregon State<\/a>. \u201cDeshawn can be an elite deep ball thrower,\u201d the coach said. \u201cAnd I think he showed that. I loved his poise. I loved how he let the game come to him.\u201d<\/p>\n With Ashford missing the Oregon State game with an injury, and with Purdie playing well in the win, the question becomes inevitable. Can someone lose their starting job due to an injury? Dickert shifted around, physically, when hearing the question. \u201cWe evaluate everything. I think it isn\u2019t an injury thing. I think it\u2019s just one of those things where guys step up and play and perform and we\u2019ll always do what\u2019s best for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n He had said earlier that while Ashford was working out, there was a thought by the staff that they needed to get him to 100% before being able to do an equitable evaluation.<\/p>\n The coach said they are also trying to get running back Demond Claiborne back to 100%. They have been limiting his contact in practice, and Dickert said a couple of weeks ago that it was likely a plan that would continue long-term. But with multiple injuries on multiple parts of his body, is getting Claiborne back to 100% even realistic? \u201cI think with the tailback position, you\u2019re never really 100% during the season. But, we need to get him as close as we can each and every week,\u201d Dickert said. The coach painted a picture of how close Claiborne has been coming on Saturday mornings. And then he goes out and takes the punishment that he does, and they have to limit him again in practice the next week.<\/p>\n One thing Dickert is not impressed with is the four wins. Not that he isn\u2019t happy for them. And he understands that Wake got only four wins in each of the last two seasons. But he says there is more to it than that. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re 4-2, and everyone\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, look at little Wake Forest. Look at what they\u2019re doing. I\u2019m so happy for them. Look at these guys. Go try hard, guys.\u2019 Is that what we\u2019re satisfied with? We\u2019re a big-time football team. We\u2019ve got big-time players.\u201d<\/p>\n He emphasized that he never saw this as a transition year with the coaching change because that implies a sort of throwaway season. \u201cThe best program builders maximize the moments. That\u2019s what I owe Nick Anderson and Demond and all those other seniors that are just working their tail off each and every day.\u201d He said the accomplishments belong to the players. \u201cI get way too much credit. These guys are coming out here, working their tail off. They believed in the coaching staff, and we\u2019ve got to keep getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n One place Dickert will not find himself this weekend is on the sidelines of his son\u2019s youth football game. He had posted on social media about it during the previous bye week. \u201cThe season\u2019s over. We\u2019re prepping for a bowl game,\u201d he said with a laugh. His son\u2019s 10U team won their first game of the season last week, on the last weekend of the regular season. Dickert joked about the message of finishing strong that goes with that.<\/p>\n Main Image from Tony Siracusa<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Wake Forest has passed the halfway mark of the season, head coach Jake Dickert has some extra time to assess the performance of his team. The Demon Deacons have their second bye week of the season this week. That means some time off for the players and a lot of analysis for the coaches. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":81317,"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":[7,35643],"tags":[10629,9582,9186,34824],"class_list":["post-81314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-demond-claiborne","tag-jake-dickert","tag-robby-ashford","tag-scott-hazelton"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81314","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=81314"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81319,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81314\/revisions\/81319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}No Running Back Question<\/h3>\n
The Measuring Stick<\/h3>\n
Time Spent<\/h3>\n