Preseason: When a Snooze is Better Than News
The best news to come out of the preseason camp that concludes this weekend at Wake is there has been so little news.
Terence Davis was lost with a torn knee tendon. As far as real news that will tangibly affect the Deacons this season, that’s about it. The battles for starting positions I expected to see all across the depth chart never really materialized. Instead the lineup set in the first week has held form pretty much throughout, other than on those days when a starter had to sit out with an injury. Michael Williams looks like he’s the guy at the corner opposite Brandon Ghee, though it wouldn’t surprise me to see Josh Bush run out with the starting lineup next week against Baylor. Bush, as we’ve mentioned, has been splitting his preseason between corner and safety. And although the coaches are still saying Barrett McMillin is giving Joe Looney a run for his money at left guard, Looney has lined up with the first team pretty much all August. Coach Jim Grobe has said that Kevin Harris will probably start at running back against Baylor, at which time the battle for starting position and reps will begin in earnest. Josh Adams looked like Wake’s best running back in the final scrimmage, by far, which has to help his prospects. He was, lest we forget, the ACC’s Rookie of the Year two years ago.
More times than not, the news coming out of preseason is the kind you don’t want to hear. I remember all too well the preseason of of 2005 when Grobe announced he was suspending running back Chris Barclay and cornerback Riley Swanson for an off-season transgression involving a green, leafy substance. of which our industrious forbears made ropes and baskets. Given that Barclay was on the verge of setting Wake Forest’s career records for rushing yards, that was news. Big news. So I alluded to Barclay’s unavailability in the opener against Vanderbilt—and the reason for it—a number of times in preseason, too many times, apparently, for the taste of some of our readers. Some suggested I was picking on Wake Forest, and looking for every opportunity to make it look bad. It was not the first time motives were assigned to my work—and falsely, as usual—nor will it be the last. But Barclay never complained, and neither did any of the coaches. Grobe’s position was that Barclay and Swanson screwed up, and had to pay the price. Did we run the news too many times? Maybe. But in the absence of anything else of major consequence taking place, I knew it was the one piece of information I could give my readers that would undoubtedly, and directly, have an outcome on a game. And of course it did, in a way I never imagined. Micah Andrews is thrust into the fray and he gains 254 yards. But the Deacons still lost to the Commodores and some guy named Jay Cutler 24-20.
I don’t want to come off like a vulture circling the practice field for signs of an injury or problem of any kind I can run back and bat out on my computer. Controversy can be a pain I can do without. See above. And I can always come up with something, especially with the help of the most helpful coach I’ve ever covered. So slow news is good news in preseason, for Wake for sure. As for me, I’m not complaining.
As for the latest injury report, tackle Chris DeGeare is coming out every day in pads, but his participation is limited by a shoulder injury. And linebacker Hunter Haynes is still sidelined by a strained hamstring. Both are expected to be available against Baylor.