Wake Forest football - yes Wake! 7-0. Interesting article on recruiting/rankings & re-engineering 🏈 [View all]

Couldn’t fit the whole thing on the subject line

Dave Clawson has created college football version's of Moneyball at Wake Forest

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32542085/dave-clawson-created-college-football-version-moneyball-wake-forest

At this point, Wake was ranked 16th, four spots lower than any other undefeated Power 5 school. The Demon Deacons led the ACC's Atlantic Division, but few pundits thought they'd stay there for long. Then there were the advanced metrics. The algorithms were downright dismissive of Wake Forest. The way Clawson sees it, the whole system is too narrow-minded.

"The formulas out there, they always downgrade us," Clawson said. "I don't think it's fair to our players that what we do is discounted, because of some recruiting rankings that came out six years ago that locks them in a certain way. Once you're a three-star, you're always a three-star."

Wake's offensive coordinator, Warren Ruggiero, compared Clawson's approach to Steve Jobs': "You can't look at the competition and say you're going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you're going to do it differently."

In Clawson's early years, Wake's offensive approach was usually to chew up as much clock as possible in hopes of winning a low-scoring game, which they did often: 6-3 (in double overtime) against Virginia Tech in 2014, 3-0 vs. BC in 2014 and 7-3 vs. Tulane in 2016. But as the talent developed, Clawson and Ruggiero adopted a new approach, a sort of Frankenstein's monster version of the triple option that utilizes a delay at the mesh point between the QB and running back that nearly affords a fan enough time to get off the couch and grab a beer before Hartman decides whether to pull the ball or hand it off. The scheme has produced increasingly astounding results, including a 70-point outburst against Army in Week 8 that came despite the Deacons holding the ball for just over 17 minutes. College football is often described as a "copycat" sport, but Wake's offense is a singularity.