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Hey BGSU fans, a Wake Forest fan here. I just wanted to see if you all could answer a few questions about Coach Clawson.

He seems to have done a very good job at Bowling Green. Ranking in the top 25 in 2013 in offense and defense and winning the MAC was obviously great, but it seems like you guys have taken another step forward this year. The offense looks awesome and I'd honestly take you guys to win the MAC again over Toledo just based on the eye test. How much of your current success do you attribute to Clawson?

Wake fans are by no means unhappy with him. We understood how bare the cupboard was when he arrived and know that rebuilding is a process. He has had success at previous stops, and his seat is by no means hot. Questions have been about some of his game management and his offense (little variation, slow delayed hand offs), though again, there is not a lot of talent to work with now and the assumption is that things will open up when we recruit better and he gets his guys on the field. We're excited about the future of our program.

So basically, I am just curious. Again, how much of your success do you attribute to him, and how much to your new coach? Do you think he can win at the highest level? What do you think about his offensive prowess (especially considering his bad year at Tennessee)? How much better was your recruiting under him? What do you think of his assistants?

Thanks for taking the time, and good luck to your squad going forward!

Babers is basically winning with nearly all Clawson recruits. Claw sons football philosophy seems much more " balanced" than Babers, as he is pretty much all offense, and I think this might hurt the defense in recruiting. time will tell. The only thing that ever bothered me about Clawson is that it seemed to take him a looooong time to identify Matt Johnson as our starting QB, favoring their original recruit at that position, when it seemed rather obvious to many of us that Johnson was the better choice. Other than than that, I thought Dave did a great job here, but it does take 4-5 years to get his system and people in place.

Deacon wrote:Hey BGSU fans, a Wake Forest fan here. I just wanted to see if you all could answer a few questions about Coach Clawson.

He seems to have done a very good job at Bowling Green. Ranking in the top 25 in 2013 in offense and defense and winning the MAC was obviously great, but it seems like you guys have taken another step forward this year. The offense looks awesome and I'd honestly take you guys to win the MAC again over Toledo just based on the eye test. How much of your current success do you attribute to Clawson?

Wake fans are by no means unhappy with him. We understood how bare the cupboard was when he arrived and know that rebuilding is a process. He has had success at previous stops, and his seat is by no means hot. Questions have been about some of his game management and his offense (little variation, slow delayed hand offs), though again, there is not a lot of talent to work with now and the assumption is that things will open up when we recruit better and he gets his guys on the field. We're excited about the future of our program.

So basically, I am just curious. Again, how much of your success do you attribute to him, and how much to your new coach? Do you think he can win at the highest level? What do you think about his offensive prowess (especially considering his bad year at Tennessee)? How much better was your recruiting under him? What do you think of his assistants?

Thanks for taking the time, and good luck to your squad going forward!

Clawson is definitely a coach that needs time. He's not going to turn a program around in year one or two.

Clawson did a good job here but I am by no means a big fan of his. He did an excellent job at cleaning up the program and creating depth on both sides of the ball. He also recruited very well. If given time he will build a good team. Most of the great skill players here were recruited by him.

The part about him I didn't like and you mentioned it was in game coaching decisions. For most of his 5 years here the offense was vanilla and predictable. He beat very few teams with winning records and had an abysmal record in games decided by less than a touchdown. Personally I thought the team underachieved on overall record just about every season but that is just my opinion. It's worth noting that he never beat a power 5 team in five seasons while his predecessor has already done it 3 times.

It all came together for him in the second half of 2013. He had put a good defense on the field for most of his time here but it wasn't until then that the offense really opened up. Part of me wonders why it took so long, but at the end of the day I'm glad it worked out the way it did.

You will probably get more glowing reports on him from others. Am I glad he coached here? Yes. Overall he is a good coach but he definitely will leave you scratching your head with his play calling.

Here's Clawson in a nutshell. He is an old-school coach and builds programs from the ground up the hard way. There are growing pains every year because the team is always growing. His ideal team is a physically dominant set of lines with a suffocating defense and an efficient clock control, occasionally explosive offense. He takes no shortcuts and takes all aspects of the game into consideration, which in the current offense-crazed game often is not what the fans want.

His builds always work when given time. Recruits soak in his message. But I've never seen him sustain, only build. So if he builds WF into a power and he does not take off for a Wisconsin or an Ohio State, it will be the first time we see him coach a built, stacked team year to year.

I believe Clawson is one of the best coaches in the game. He built us into a power, and Babers has made us exciting. Both guys were the right hire at the right time.

Thanks for the insight. I appreciate the responses. I've been encouraged by what Clawson has done so far and am looking forward to seeing the next few years

factman wrote:it does take 4-5 years to get his system and people in place.

This is key. Clawson has rebuilt programs slow and steady every place he's ever been. About this time in Year 5, some fans still wanted to run him out of town. We had just lost to Toledo, and some fans didn't think he would ever be able to win the tough games.

But Clawson's Falcons finished the regular season 4-0 and won the MAC title by beating Northern Illinois. Suddenly, Clawson got an offer from Wake Forest and he was gone just like that. Most of us were very sorry to see him go.

His offenses aren't exciting. I prefer what Babers is doing tactically on offense. But there is no question that Clawson could recruit. We had some great talent here by Year 5. Babers is still winning mostly with Clawson recruits.

Clawson was a great recruiter and built the program the right way. Most importantly he cleaned up a program that had scholarship penalties and got us back on track. He was definitely the right hire at the time, and even managed to get us our first championship in quite awhile.

That said he wasn't my cup of tea. His gameplans made me wanna claw my eyes out. We never beat a bcs team, only beat ut once. His style is to build a physically dominant team, and then under utilize that talent. I don't think he'll ever bea a great coach because I don't think he'll ever win games against teams on similar or better talent levels to his own with enough consistency to be a great coach.

He is, however, the absolutely perfect choice for a struggling program that needs somebody to build a foundation and some walls. Then bring in somebody else to do the finish work.

As others have said...Clawson is an excellent recruiter and an extremely well organized, methodical coach. His teams were frustrating to watch because they weren't particularly imaginative or courageous on offense...even though he had the personnel to open it up more rather than play the short game. Given the time (4-5 years) I think he can build Wake into a solid ACC program. I'm a bigger fan of Clawson than I am Warren Ruggiero....much bigger...

factman wrote:Babers is basically winning with nearly all Clawson recruits. Claw sons football philosophy seems much more " balanced" than Babers, as he is pretty much all offense, and I think this might hurt the defense in recruiting. time will tell. The only thing that ever bothered me about Clawson is that it seemed to take him a looooong time to identify Matt Johnson as our starting QB, favoring their original recruit at that position, when it seemed rather obvious to many of us that Johnson was the better choice. Other than than that, I thought Dave did a great job here, but it does take 4-5 years to get his system and people in place.

This seems like a lot of revisionist history. Clawson yanked Shilz two possessions into his senior year in favor of Johnson and never looked back.

I must have watched a LOT more practices than you did!

If Johnson showed anything in that VT game his RS Fr year after Clawson pulled Shilz, maybe a change would have been made earlier. But he looked just as bad, if not worse than Shilz did.

Besides, you were predicting Knapke to take over after Shilz's senior year, not Johnson. I don't think Johnson was the obvious answer you are recalling it to be.