Either a bill is about to come due for Wake Forest or Demon Deacons head coach Dave Clawson is going to have the strongest proof yet supporting his unique offense. After winning 19 games across the last two years largely on the arm of Sam Hartman, Wake Forest needs to reload.
Traditionally, this is not a program that can reload. Remove going 4-5 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and the Deacons have won at least eight games in three straight years and at least seven games in six straight.
Before 2016, Wake Forest had reached eight wins a total of six times in its 108 years of football, seven wins only 12 times. Before Clawson rallied from consecutive 3-9 seasons to start his tenure with a 7-6 showing in 2016, the Deacons had not reached at least seven wins since 2008.
Clumping together six years of 49 wins — again, excluding 2020 here — was utterly unheard of. Between the arbitrary cutoff of 2000 and Clawson’s revival beginning in 2016, Wake Forest was above .500 just five times.
History sets a program’s ceiling in college football, and the ceiling in Winston-Salem has always been low. However, if Clawson can find his way to seven or eight wins again, he may have raised the Wake Forest floor past its usual 3-9. Instead, this may be a perennial bowl team, at the absolute minimum.
OFFENSIVE SUMMARY
This year will answer if the Deacons’ near-decade of success was entirely dependent on a strong run of quarterbacks or if those quarterbacks were somewhat a byproduct of Clawson’s design.
Do not take that as any Sam Hartman concern, Notre Dame fans. A sixth-year veteran with a bounty of ACC career records is beyond some reproach. But for him to find such success as a freshman, more of the credit lands at Clawson’s feet. Hartman was a surprising freshman starter in 2018 before injury cost him most of November, finding his way to 16 touchdowns and eight interceptions and completing 60.5 percent of his passes in his last four non-Clemson games.
Some of that is a biased selection, but the point stands: Clawson accelerated Hartman’s career, or Hartman is a more special talent than has been realized. (And that latter possibility is part of why he transferred out of Winston-Salem to try to prove some things to the NFL.)
Before Hartman, John Wolford became an NFL product in Clawson’s system, throwing 29 touchdowns and just six touchdowns in his final season, averaging 8.5 yards per pass attempt.
When the Demon Deacons turned a 31-10 halftime deficit into a 48-37 final result at Notre Dame in 2017, that impressive second half sparked some consternation among Irish fans. But Wolford going 16-of-22 for 195 yards and two touchdowns after halftime was not that out of character. Wake Forest just wasn’t as known in 2017 as it has become in 2023. Wolford was considered a one-year wonder, not yet a three-year NFL player with four career starts and a Super Bowl ring.
Jamie Newman’s 2019 was so impressive he became the hottest quarterback on the transfer market. Then, he never logged another career start.
Wolford found success beyond Clawson’s offense; yes, sticking in the NFL for multiple seasons, even as a reserve, counts as a success in this context. Newman did not. Presume Hartman and Notre Dame excel in 2023 because Hartman has that good of an arm. The real tiebreaker in this wonder will be Deacons senior quarterback Mitch Griffis.
He went 29-of-41 for 8.5 yards per pass attempt and five touchdowns last season, nearly all of those stats tallied against FCS-level VMI while Hartman recovered from a preseason health scare.
Griffis has been around Winston-Salem long enough to be comfortable with the intricacies of Clawson’s slow-mesh offense — ponder handing off the ball to the running back for longer than any other quarterback in the country, read the defensive line, either hand off the ball or throw it deep. Is that enough to propel this offense again?
Wake Forest has scored 31.8 points per game or more for six straight seasons, the only ACC team to clear 30 points per game for that long. (Notre Dame has cleared 30 points per game in every season since 2014.)
Griffis will not have to do it alone, but he is the piece that will make it all hum or harm. Running back Justice Ellison (707 yards and six touchdowns last season) will be enough of a threat to make defenses have to ponder that slow-mesh, but if Griffis does not read each play correctly, that will not matter.
Losing receiver Donovan Greene for, at the least, the bulk of the season will lessen Griffis’s deep options, but Wake Forest continues to churn out impressive receivers, so that may be the least of his worries, even with A.T. Perry now in a New Orleans Saints uniform. Jahmal Banks and Taylor Morin will find successes, each scoring nine times last year. Tennessee receiver transfer Walker Merrill is a former four-star prospect that rivals.com considered the No. 54 receiver in the class of 2021. (Context: Notre Dame receiver Jayden Thomas was the No. 45 receiver in the class.) The receivers have the talent, if Griffis can get out the ball.
Returning only two offensive line starters will further the crucial aspects of Griffis’s diagnostics. Defensive lines already try to pressure the slow-mesh. Now they will have better access to it.
This analysis may be far too staked on a first-year starting quarterback, but the slow-mesh offense demands that emphasis.
5 most-important players for Wake Forest (non-QB) heading into the season: https://t.co/ynlWYURT1O
— Conor O'Neill (@ConorONeill_DI) August 23, 2023
DEFENSIVE SUMMARY
The other thing that demands Griffis star in his first year as a starter is Wake Forest’s overall lack of defense. Sure, the offense has cleared 31 points per game every year since 2017, but the defense has given up at least 28.3 points per game in each of those years, as well. In 2018 and 2020, it gave up 33.3 and 32.8 points per game, respectively.
Now it loses its top-three defensive tackles (including third-round NFL draft pick Kobi Turner after making 10 tackles for loss last year), two of its top-three defensive ends (including Rondell Bothroyd’s transfer to Oklahoma after notching six sacks last year) and two starting cornerbacks.
When Wake Forest beat writer Conor O’Neill details the five most important players on the roster, there is a reason he starts with cornerback Caelen Carson, “an NFL-caliber cornerback when healthy,” and defensive tackle Kevin Pointer. They are two of the few known commodities on an already lackluster defense.
2023 OUTLOOK
Returning just 11 total starters will make life difficult for any program. For the Demon Deacons, it may be a precursor of a coming cliff.
The universal pandemic eligibility waiver threw chaos into roster construction across the country. Wake Forest made the most of it. A program built on talent development to start with, that 2020 waiver gave Clawson and his staff 12 extra months to develop players. It worked. See: The Deacons went 19-8 the last two seasons, reached an ACC championship game and won two bowl games.
Phil Steele counted 39 players on last year’s roster in their fifth, sixth or seventh years. That has fallen by about 10 this season. It will fall again next year and likely in 2025, as the last players with that eligibility waiver will matriculate after the 2024 season.
Clawson built this program on talent development and a unique offense. Entering his 10th season, has he built enough momentum to sustain that success without the pandemic eligibility benefit? Is the offense predicated on a top-tier quarterback or can merely-quality players run it?
2023 will answer that latter question, at least once Wake Forest gets into the back half of October. A five-week stretch of vs. Pittsburgh, vs. Florida State, at Duke, vs. North Carolina State and at Notre Dame will be the litmus test, both for 2023 and for some long-term wonders.
See the four-plus minutes beginning at 7:22 in the below video for a more detailed conversation doubting Wake Forest’s 2023 outlook, as well as an argument otherwise.
NOTRE DAME’S OPPONENTS
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With one of the most talented rosters in the country, Ohio State waits on a QB
Mike Elko and QB Riley Leonard look to recreate last year’s surprise success at Duke
Massive roster turnover could be high-risk, high-reward for Louisville
USC offense, QB Caleb Williams may need to carry the Trojans defense once again
Now with his hometown Pittsburgh, former Irish QB Phil Jurkovec gets one more year
With a new offense and a new quarterback, Clemson looks to reach championship heights again
