Wake Forest Athletics
2015 Signing Day Quotes - Dave Clawson
2/4/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
Wake Forest Coach Clawson
Opening Statement...
"Today is the one day of the year when everybody is undefeated, so we will keep that trend going. I want to thank everyone for coming out as we introduce the newest members of the Deacon Football family, our 2015 football recruiting class. I say this every year but it's appropriate; the group represents a lot of hard work by a lot of people. It starts with our assistant football coaches and our staff. All of their families, certainly our wives and our kids are at functions and are very involved. I really want to thank our faculty members. The faculty at Wake Forest are great and I think it represents what Wake Forest is as a school. There are faculty members who take time out of their schedule to meet with recruits one on one, to give up weekends and spend time with our recruits. When you have support like that from the faculty, it is a great help to recruiting and I really want to thank them. I want to thank our staff members, all of the athletic staff members.
"I especially want to thank our current players. They know we need to become more talented to win more football games in the ACC. They went out of their way to accommodate the recruits. I always say this - it's the coach's job to get them on campus and it's the player's job to get them to commit. Our football players did a great job as hosts and I really appreciate that.
"The approach to the class was a lot different than a year ago. A year ago, quite honestly, we didn't know what we had. When you looked at the team coming back, so many people had graduated. We really weren't sure what the roster was. A year ago we basically recruited a whole football team, not knowing what the specific needs were. Having gone through spring football and having gone through a season, being able to evaluate the players we recruited a year ago, this year our recruiting efforts were much more focused. We had a better idea as a staff the type of players we can get who are fits for Wake Forest, not just positionally but character-wise and academically, all those things. We just got a much better feel for what fits at Wake Forest."
On the offense....
"I'll start on offense. When we first got here on the offensive side of the ball, we watched the film and to be very frank, we knew we had a lot of work to do. We almost took a two year approach to it. Last year we went hard after linemen. We signed six offensive linemen, we redshirted five of them. The thought process there is, it takes linemen a little longer to get ready than skill guys. Year two into it, this year the plan was we had to get the skill kids. It's not an accident that we signed two quarterbacks, two running backs, five receivers, and a tight end. That's close to half the recruiting class positionally is offensive skill players."
On the quarterback position....
"The plan was to get one and we were absolutely thrilled when we got Kendall. We thought that he was if not the best, certainly one of the very best quarterbacks in the state of North Carolina. He's a great fit for our offense. He's athletic. He's accurate. He's a winner. He led Southern Durham to a state championship. They were in a great run this year, until the semifinals. A good competitor. A 3.9-4.0 student. He's everything we look for in a Wake Forest quarterback in terms of tangibles, Leadership, his ability to throw and run the football. The plan was to take one.....To be able to get Kyle Kearns in January, I think was a steal for us. He was a guy we liked early in the process, we liked him last spring. We just had a player of Kendall' s caliber so close. Kendall became the primary target. But Kyle was a guy we liked a year ago. Sometimes in recruiting you get a little bit lucky. He was committed to a school that went through a coaching change and he became available and we were thrilled to get him. We feel that we got two really good quarterbacks in the class. Obviously Kendall is here now which will really help us in the spring. We believe that we are starting to solidify that position in great competition, John won the job last year and it wasn't really a great competition. We had to bring in more competition and more players and I think we are really happy where we ended up there."
On the receivers in the class...
"[Alex Bachman] has really good hands. It just depends on what our needs are. I think he's a guy that we probably will start him as a slot, but I think he could be big enough to play an outside receiver position. We view Tabari [Hines] as a slot. We view Steven [Claude] and Scotty [Washington] as outside receivers, and then [Bachman] and [Chuck Wade] are the guys that could be slots or outside guys. A lot of it depends on what we need. A lot of it depends on who is ready soonest. We thought there was flexibility with them."
On roster depth and player development...
"When this class comes in, I think our roster will be a lot more balanced, have a lot more depth. Wake Forest will always be a program about player development. It's nice that some of these guys are three stars or four stars, but I think about what these guys can be in two years. That's the critical point for us."
On the defensive commits...
"I think defensively, it was a little bit different. I think there's more places on defense where we feel like we do have established players. Our biggest concern going into this was the corner position. When you graduate two players the caliber of Kevin Johnson and Bud Noel, that is a position that we had two get at least two good ones. We would not have minded getting a third if there was one. We're thrilled with how we did there. Amari Henderson was our number one corner in the state. It's hard for you to say no to that. He is a really good corner that fits our coverage scheme well. Dionte Austin was a guy we offered over a year ago. I would say that there, we got our top two targets. Those are guys that committed early, stayed with their commitments. They had other options and they stayed loyal. They see great opportunity to play.
"I think other than that, we looked at the defensive line as a place that we had to build depth. We recruited two defensive ends and two defensive tackles. The ends are Paris Black and Chris Calhoun. Paris is from Fayetteville, certainly a great history at Wake Forest with players from Fayetteville. Paris is a guy we offered very early, committed early in the process, and stuck with his commitment. Chris Calhoun was a guy from Georgia that came to camp. We love his speed and his athleticism. He's a guy that can be a really outstanding pass rusher for us in time.
"At defensive tackle, Khalil Welsh was a guy that SEC schools were coming on him as of a week ago. He's another guy that we were very happy when the fax came in today. I think he has the chance to be a really high-level player for us. We really like Elontae Bateman from Memphis as well. We loved his film and got him to commit about a week ago.
"At linebacker, probably because we took three last year, we would take one but only if we felt they were really good. One guy we had in camp was Nate Mays. He ran extremely well, very athletic. He could play either of our inside linebacker position. And then a guy we liked a lot on film was Justin Strnad from Florida. He's just tall, athletic, physical, runs extremely well. He was an early offer and an early commitment, and stuck with us and stayed loyal. We really think we helped ourselves depth-wise.
"One of the latest additions in the class was Jessie Bates. He just visited last weekend. He's a guy that had really good senior film. He does a lot of things that we like. He has good ball skills, he returns punts. I think he has a really bright future."
