My Take on Wake - Upon Futher Review

Upon Futher Review

To start with the disclaimer, I don’t believe officiating decided Wake’s 31-28 loss at Clemson Saturday and, from the way I read coach Jim Grobe at today’s gathering to eat chicken and talk football,neither does he.

It also bears mentioning that I haven’t seen that charge from many in the fan base.

There have been a number of readers, however, who wondered about at least two calls in the game, so I promised I would ask Grobe his thoughts. The two calls in question were the seven seconds on the clock when Clemson snapped the ball for the game-winning goal, and whether there should have been time remaining after it split the uprights, and whether he thought tight end Brandon Ford was out of bounds before the caught the touchdown catch that cut Wake’s lead to 28-21 late in the third quarter.

Ford’s catch came on a second-and-goal from the seven, immediately after the Tigers had been backed up five yards for illegal motion.

“I don’t know about the clock,’’ Grobe said. “I think ACC people manage it. I don’t think they’re going to let it be an issue there.

“So I don’t really have any thoughts about the seven seconds.’‘

He did, however, have reason to wonder about the other call.

“To me that was a no-brainer,’’ Grobe said. “He was out of bounds and came back in and caught the ball.

“But the problem that we’ve got is we have a term `indisputatable’ for replays. Well ask any lawyer, and everything’s disputable. So what I’d like to see them do is change the rule book and say `If you used a litlte common sense, do you think this should be changed?’ Put it that way and it would be a little more obvious. But when you say `indisputable,’ anything can be disputed.

“They reviewed it and said it was too close to call, that you couldn’t say he was out and came back in. Of course the problem with that is, it doesn’t mean that on third down they wouldn’t have scored. That was second down. They could have scored on third down. But that would have taken seven more seconds off the clock and now (they’re) not kicking a field goal. So it was an important time, and that’s not why we lost the game or whatever.

“And you know how I feel about our (officials) in the ACC. I think we’ve got great guys who work their tail-ends off. I would not want to be an official today. I think the game’s so fast and now with replay everything’s scrutinized. I used to think coaching was the toughest job but I’m not sure officiating is not tougher.’‘

At which point I interjected that sportswriting was the toughest. After all the laughter died down, I pressed him a bit further on Ford’s touchdown.

“As you looked at it again, you saw something different than they saw?’’ I couched it.

“Well we can freeze it,’’ Grobe said. “(Ford) put his heels right on the line.

“Now here’s the deal. Are his heels on the line, or or his heels over (the top of) the line. It’s easy for me. His heels were on the line. But to somebody else, that becomes disputable. That’s where you go.

“You can make too big a deal out of anything. Everybody’s got an opinion. I’m fine with the way they called it. If that’s what they thought, that’s what they thought.

“I’m fine with it.’’

Back to the main page.

By Dan Collins on 11/15/2011 (2:37 pm)

Comments

From an article today about the Wake/Clemson game. What a concept; making adjustments during the game to beat Wake. Too bad we haven’t figured out how to do this?

“But beginning in the late third quarter against Wake Forest, Boyd adjusted and completed 17 of his final 22 passes for 199 yards and two touchdowns. He hit tight ends in the short passing game, which Boyd said “opened things up.” It’s the type of adjustment Morris wanted to see.”

Steven on 11/16/2011 (4:32 pm)

Dan, any comment on having the ball with 1:15ish left in the game, with the game tied, and not running the ball at least once to try and run some time off in the process of trying to win (especially since Pendergrass was so successful throughout the game)?

Kip on 11/16/2011 (1:00 pm)

Amen to Jack’s comments below; exactly what I’ve been thinking and I echo every word he said.

Steven on 11/16/2011 (11:16 am)

Dan, please—it wasn’t a close call. The TV broadcast showed that his foot was clearly out of bounds, and the announcers said so.

DP on 11/16/2011 (10:18 am)

Winning is the name of the game.In order to win you need the players;the coaches and a winning attitude. Wake needs lots of help to accomplish this goal. The trite statement of being a small school doesn’t hold any weight. If you want to play in the ACC then make the necessary changes to do so.Start with new coaches with new ideas that can possibly turn the team around to a winning spirit. Make no excuses for loses just correct what has to be done.Continual blunders are becoming a way of life at Wake Forest football games.

jack mac donald on 11/16/2011 (9:53 am)

Coach Grobe has said in the past that he doesn’t like to use revenge as a motivating factor to get his team pumped up to play another team but it’s been very difficult for this Wake fan to forget the whippin’ we got in College Park last year. Maryland ran the score up and Wake lost 62-14. We owe the Terps big time and we desperately need a win to become bowl eligible and stop the bleeding! Wake must put Clemson behind them and complete the task at hand. There is a lot riding on these last games. A bowl game, finishing above .500 in the conference, respectability, momentum for next season etc. GO DEACS!!!

av8r on 11/16/2011 (9:20 am)

Love Coach Grobe, but “I’m fine with it” bothers me. That game was for the ACC division title and the officials badly missed it.

thomas on 11/16/2011 (12:34 am)

We shouldn’t be talking about officating in the Clemson game. We had more than enough chances to win the game. The problem was simply our offense could not make first downs when it needed to to put the game away. If they had then the other would not have come into play. This has happened over and over again this year.

dellis on 11/15/2011 (10:05 pm)

Oops ... make that Supervisor of Officials Rhoads (not Rhodes).

Rhenish on 11/15/2011 (5:44 pm)

Follow-up questions: (1) Schools are allowed to send plays to the ACC office (Supervisor of Officials Rhodes) for their comment. Did you send the “illegal touching” play to the ACC office? (2) If so, what response did you get? (3) Repeat 1 & 2 for the clock issue on the field goal.

Rhenish on 11/15/2011 (5:43 pm)

In plays such as this, complaints almost never amount to anything. Even in cases when the league admits a mistake was made, it never changes antyhing. Clemson still has the win, and we don’t even know if the correct call would have influenced the game one way or another anyway. Even if Newman had made the field goal then maybe Clemson’s strategy would have changed and they would have won by 4 (by scoring a touchdown instead of a field goal) on their second to last drive or their last drive. There are just too many variables to know what would have happened had a call gone a different way.

The more I thought about this game the more I came to recognize that I almost always remember the calls that didn’t go my team’s way and seldom add up (or make a mental note) of the calls that did not go the other team’s way. I suppose they usually just about even out. I think that we might notice Duke’s fortuitous calls more in basketball or Clemson’s more in football because they are usually very good teams and don’t need any extra help. But they probably get about the same amount of good and bad calls as anyone. Coach K may get after the refs enough to get one or two extra calls his way, and Coach Grobe may get one or two fewer because of his easy-going demeanor. But ultimately the refs almost never make enough of a difference that a team cannot overcome it. The one exception that I can recall was when Wake played Virginia Tech in basketball two years ago. I could not believe how one-sided the officiating was that night. For a while I thought, once again, it may have just been my own personal bias…until Dan wrote a whole blog entry supporting my perspective the next day. And that’s why I appreicate Dan so much - he invariably tells it the way it really is. And, in this case, the call probably didn’t matter all that much.

Matt on 11/15/2011 (5:23 pm)

If this call had been made correctly, we would have had a TD taken off the board at the Duke game.

Chris on 11/15/2011 (5:20 pm)

I respect Coach Grobe’s tact, he always takes the high road on most all issues. For most of us Deacon fans, that is one the things we respect him for. It was a very bad call—-we all know it. It may, or may not of mattered in the outcome of the game. However, as one very long-term ACC fan, I get tired of bad calls consistantly coming in the same venues. In football, it is most often at Clemson. In basketball it is almost always Duke. Why can’t the ACC Officials recognize this issue and make some effort to deal with it. I do hope our athletic office sent the proper complaint to the ACC on this particular instance. The sqeaking wheel does finally get some grease.

steveh on 11/15/2011 (4:20 pm)

One of Wake’s most sucessful baseball coaches (Jack Stallings) use to say that until you played an absolutely perfect game an umpire’s call woukd never be the cause for losing a game.
Now that didn’t keep him from taking some world class shots at the umps from the dugout.

Deacon23 on 11/15/2011 (3:57 pm)

Did you ask Grobe about Newman blowing a 32 yard chip shot field goal right in front of the goal posts? What about not asking Newman to kick any long field goals all year. That effectively choked away the Championship game for the Deacs this year.

John on 11/15/2011 (3:26 pm)