Talking Wake Forest With Old Gold & Blog

Zach Smith blogs about the Deacs at Old Gold & Blog. He answered a few of my questions below. My responses to his questions are here.


1.) Wake has scored a bunch of non-offensive touchdowns this year, and over the last couple of years at least, it seems like the Deacs have been incredibly opportunistic in regards to turnovers. If this isn't mostly just good luck, what's going on?

This is just the way Wake plays football. More often than not, the big play comes because we sit back and let it come to us due to a mistake by the opponent. That isn’t to say that our defenders/kick returns haven’t made some great plays on their own, but by focusing on avoiding mistakes and letting the big plays come to us, good things have happened.

2.) Kenneth Moore--the best receiver in the ACC that no one's heard of? Also, I noticed that aside from Moore, there seems to be a lack of productive receivers. Is depth an issue there?

I can’t argue with that. Kenny has been all over the place this season, and it is definitely disappointing that he doesn’t have more support around him. There are enough guys who play the position, just not enough of them producing. The biggest disappointment in this area has been Kevin Marion, who has proved time and time again that he can’t catch a pass (unfortunate since he has a tendency to run very far very fast when he does get the ball). Several weeks ago we took the redshirt off of freshman Jordan Williams (almost unheard of under Grobe) and he has started to show some promise, but it isn’t enough yet.

Really though, the only other significant passing target has been TE John Tereshinski

3.) Why hasn't some other school driven a truckload of cash to Jim Grobe's house?

Well it has happened to an extent in the past, as he was being talked about for the Alabama job last season until he made it very clear he didn’t want to go anywhere. I pretty much expect Nebraska to come after him this off season, and possibly several others if the Michigan job opens up and starts a coaching carousel. Unfortunately for those schools (but not for us) Grobe really does seem to like it here and seems totally believable when he says he wants to stay, so at this point I’m really not that worried about losing him.

4.) Who are the standouts on the defensive side of the ball for Wake this year? Where is the defense's biggest weakness?

The defense has been an interesting (and by interesting I mean alternatively awesome and incredibly frustrating) group to watch this season. Aaron Curry has played very well and very consistently at linebacker, and Jeremy Thompson has 6.5 sacks. Our run defense has looked very good all season long. The secondary has been a bit more interesting, making many great plays (Alphonso Smith’s 4 INTs with 150 INT returns yards) and many mysteriously terrible ones (the entire secondary at the end of the 1st half against Virginia ). Particularly after the last two games, there’s no doubt in my mind that they secondary is the weak link in our defense.

5.) The whole winning an ACC championship thing--overrated, yes? Please say yes.

Not in your wildest dreams.