On Second Thought: Grobe Not Infallible
If there’s a college football coach more willing to second-guess himself than Wake’s Jim Grobe, then I haven’t met him.
Most coaches—or most people for that matter—don’t like to admit they’re wrong. They see it as a sign of weakness, something that the inevitable detractors would love to use against them.
Grobe’s different in that regard, as he proved again in today’s first media conference of the season when he was asked about what he expects from this season’s offensive line. A year ago, as you’ll remember, the Deacons opened the season as a spread offense team intent on fully ulitizing the talents of quarterback Riley Skinner before Grobe re-incorporated the I-formation during the week of practice leading up to the seventh game against Miami.
“The No. 1 thing you do with your offensive line is you give them a chance to be aggressive,’’ Grobe said. “And you try to start that with running the football.
“I kind of lost my way last year. You get enamored with Riley’s arm. You’re out there and you’re watching this guy throw the football so well. And if you’re not careful you try to design the whole offense around him—which is not a dumb thing to do, but it can backfire on you. Because if the rest of the guys around him don’t fit that scheme, then it puts too much pressure on him. What we’d like to be able to do at times is just hand the ball to somebody and not count on (Skinner) to make a million different reads on every snap.’‘
Two others who are expected to benefit from the Deacons’ return to the I-formation are fullbacks Mike Rinfrette and Tommy Bohanon. Rinfrette, a physical 6-3, 260-pound senior, spent much of the first six games last season split wide.
“That was another thing of me not being the smartest guy in the world,’’ Grobe said. “Last year we tried to be too much spread, and too much dinking and dunking. And we had a couple of pretty good fullbacks that we probably didn’t take advantage of doing that.’‘
Of course if you’re going to be willing to admit a mistakes, it helps to not make too many of them. And Grobe, in his eight years at Wake, has proven to be the best coach the Deacons have ever had.