Wake Forest Athletics
Football Practice Report No. 11
8/22/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 22, 2009
It was another work day for the Wake Forest football team on Saturday night at the Doc Martin Football Practice Complex as the Demon Deacons prepare for the season opener in two weeks against Baylor. The Deacons host the Bears at 3:30 on Saturday, Sept. 5 at BB&T Field.
"I think it was a good work practice," said head coach Jim Grobe following the workout. "We had a good, solid two-hour practice. I thought our guys worked really hard. We got a lot of kicking stuff in and that was a good thing. I thought we had good energy."
With two weeks to go before the opener, Grobe is looking for more sharpness from both his offensive and defensive units.
"I thought the offense was way too sloppy tonight," said Grobe. "We had some issues getting lined up from time to time. I'm glad we didn't have officials at practice tonight or we would have had either a bunch of delay of game (penalties) or a bunch of formation problems. On the defensive side, I thought we had a good work practice. I was a little disappointed at the end of practice. On one hand, I was encouraged that the offense picked up (its pace) at the end of practice but I felt the defense went to sleep a couple of times in the team drills. All in all, I thought it we got good work in but we certainly have a lot of things we can improve on."
With two weeks left in preseason camp, Grobe and his staff are not yet concerned about preparing for Baylor.
"We're still going more against ourselves," said Grobe. "It's probably too early to just start game planning Baylor. Right now, we are more concerned about playing techniques and in some cases, coaching some guys who haven't been on the game field on a Saturday. We're trying to get them ready to go. There's a little bit of Baylor (planning) but mostly we're just going against each other and running our stuff at each other."
Grobe hopes to see improvement before that season opener on Sept. 5.
"We're a football team that is not ready to play yet," Grobe said. "We're still making too many mental mistakes but I think that's probably because we're still giving reps to a lot of guys. We really haven't gone to where we're only working two deep. We still have a lot of guys who, in some cases, are on the third and fourth teams, getting reps. While I'm not really tickled over the execution right now, I need to keep in mind that we're still giving a lot of reps to a lot of players and probably by Wednesday, when school starts, we'll have to cut that down to just two deep."
The Deacons will take Sunday off and then practice at 2:15 p.m. Monday at the Doc Martin Practice Complex. Wake is scheduled to hold an intrasquad scrimmage on Tuesday, Aug. 25 at BB&T Field at 10:30 a.m.
