Spring camp at Wake Forest is a day-to-day evolution. With six quarterbacks in camp, and most of them new, snaps are at a premium. The offensive line has 11 guys so rest from all the snaps is at a premium. The receivers are working with quarterbacks who are significantly different from each other. As the new world at Wake Forest moves forward, the offense is looking for a groove.
First-year head coach Jake Dickert acknowledged this week that after the first “week-and-a-half of camp, the defense is slightly ahead of the offense. “I think that’s fair to say,” he told the media this week. “Besides one player, [Demond Claiborne], there’s not really any production coming back on that side of the ball.”
Wake Forest Looking For a Groove
Defense and Offense At Different Paces
Dickert said he expects it to take longer for the offense to gel. “We’re a little banged up at offensive line,” he said. “So I think that always leads to tougher situations, more pressure on the quarterback, less running lanes.”
But at this point in camp, with a new staff and so many new players, it really still is less about knowing specific play calls and more about the new systems as a whole. Dickert told the media he was not worried about schematic mistakes right now, so much as getting the details down. Everything is still a learning process, according to Dickert.
He said early in his coaching career he was told that it takes a staff three years to be completely on the same page. “I told our guys we don’t have that kind of time,” he said. Dickert told the media that one of his primary jobs as a head coach with an entirely new staff is to lend clarity to the process every day. “How can we ask our guys [the players] to be on the same page, if we’re not?”
Details on Offense
Receiver Jeremiah Melvin said the focus on details requires a heightened level of attention from everyone. “I’m mindful of how I approach every day, from meetings to breakfast to walkthroughs to practice,” he told us. “I’m just trying to attack everything with the same mindset and treat everything as the same.” He said everyone on the team is working from the mindset of the switch needing to be flipped to “on” at all times.
As a receiver fighting for playing time, Melvin said he enjoys the fact that there are so many quarterbacks with differing styles at camp. He said building a relationship with each of the quarterbacks off the field has been critical to his development. And he said the fact that they are all going through these changes together is bringing about a cohesiveness. “Change is unity, and that unity is really showing.”
Forward Moving Defense
Part of the change for Wake is a new defense that Dickert proclaimed early on would be more aggressive. Returning defensive back Rushaun Tongue said he can feel the change even after just a handful of practices. “We’re bringing energy every day. Hopefully, all the different aspects of the techniques and stuff will come in.”
Tongue said the energy level picked up once the players started practicing in pads. “It’s better to be more aggressive than less aggressive, especially for a defense,” Tongue said. “It’s better to try to calm it down than to have to try to raise the bar for being aggressive.”
The Team Gets Bowled Over
Last week, we learned that Dickert and some of the players had organized several off-field “team bonding” events. One of them was a multi-stage bowling tournament. From every player we asked, they had differing thoughts on who the best bowler was among the players. But the best overall? There was no ambiguity in their answers to that question. It was their new head coach.
“When you grow up in small town Wisconsin, you know with some local bars and bowling alleys, I think you just take that on a little bit,” Dickert quipped. “These guys [the players] like to play with the spin. I’m a straight-line ball guy.”
Wake has nine more Spring camp practices before the Spring “scrimmage” open to the fans on April 19th.
Main Image: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
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