Wake Forest Football HC Dave Clawson Interview (11-9-22)

It really is a crazy stat that for the first time in ACC history, the ACC Big Four all going bowling in the same year. Duke, Wake, NC State, North Carolina, plus Appalachian State had a magical September.

They're likely going to go bowling. My East Carolina Pirates going to play in a bowl game for the first time since Lincoln Riley was calling plays in 2014. And right now we're getting set for a big matchup in Winston-Salem between two of the ACC's Big Four, Wake Forest in North Carolina. And a coach we always love visiting with Dave Claussen joins us now because every time we chat with Coach Claussen, I always tend to learn something. And coach, I'd love to know if you have a theory on the high quality of in-state football we've seen the last few years. Mac Brown, he surmised it can be linked to the rise in population, more people, more football players, more good football players.

It's just that simple. What do you think? Well, first, Josh, thanks for having me on. I'm glad you feel you learned something. I'd be interested in what that tidbit is at the end of today's talk. I just think right now in the state of North Carolina, Coach Doran's going into his 10th year.

I'm going into my ninth. Coach Brown is getting in his fourth year. So those three programs are stable and Mike Elko has done a phenomenal job at Duke.

I think probably most people expected three of the four to be in bowls. And Mike's done a great job and really has Duke playing at a high level. And I think a lot of it just has to do with the coaching stability of all these programs and the quality of players that we've recruited. And I even think you look at East Carolina and Mike Houston has now been there for a few years and has a stable program and app's been good for a long time. So I think, again, the coaching stability probably as much as anything has a lot to do with it. Mike Houston's first coaching job in football in the 90s was at East Surry High School right here in the Triad a good while back. Mac Brown and Nick Saban, while we're talking about good tidbits here, they're the only FBS coaches who are 71 and older. And with the divisionless format, assuming you don't meet in Charlotte sometime now, between now and 2025, Wake Forest isn't going to play North Carolina again until 2025.

So who knows? The next time we'll see Mac Brown playing in Winston-Salem or if we're going to see him coaching in Winston-Salem again against your program. When you talk about a Hall of Famer like Mac Brown, Coach. For the record, you said that, not me. Oh yeah. Let the record show that. Let the record show that. I don't want there to be any victims out there in social media or the Twitter universe saying that from our talk. I said that.

That is completely from your mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Let's keep that clear. Yeah, of course.

That's completely clear. Dave Kloss, a great awareness on your part. I just wanted to set that up to ask you, what do you most respect and admire about Mac Brown, the resume he's put together, a Hall of Fame career? Well, he's just everywhere he's been. He's made the programs better from App to Tulane to North Carolina to Texas and back to North Carolina again. And he's just been very consistent. He's good for college football. Mac is very polished and is just a real good representative of our sport. And he's certainly brought a lot of interest and media attention to football in the state.

So I think all of it's been good. You mentioned Mike Elko, who was your assistant for a long time in Winston-Salem and even further on than that. What's impressed you the most about looking from afar since you haven't played the Blue Devils yet this year, the job that he's done at Duke, building Duke into a winner so quickly? I know Mike's a really good coach. Mike worked with me at all four schools, Fordham, Richmond, Bowling Green, and then Wake Forest.

And Mike is number one, very intelligent and very smart. I think if anything, I'm so impressed with how he has their offense playing. You expect Mike to have an impact on the defense because that's his background. But their quarterback is playing really well. And we're watching a lot of film on him this week because watching the North Carolina game, but just very impressed with their offense, their quarterback, their creativity and how much better those guys have gotten in year one. It's Wake coach Dave Klossen with us.

A primetime game Saturday between the Tar Heels and the Demon Deacons. Speaking of Riley Leonard, he's exceeded expectations in a great way. The only other quarterback I think that might have exceeded expectations more in the league is the guy you're going up against this week in Drake May. What traits does Drake May possess that differentiates him from the challenge you faced with Sam Howell the last couple of years?

Well, it's the same offensive system. And any time you have that type of production at the quarterback position with different quarterbacks, I think you have to give a lot of credit to the coordinator. Phil Longo is a really good football coach and he had Sam Howell playing at a high level very quickly. And now Drake May, his first year as a starter, is running the offense extremely well. And it's always a problem on defense when the quarterback can run the design of the play.

And then when the design of the play breaks down, there can be creativity and explosive plays off of broken plays. And I think that's what's so impressive is sometimes when you play a young quarterback, everything has to be clean for him for the play to work, and he's making those plays. But then when things break down, his ability to make plays with his feet, he makes good scramble decisions, he throws the ball extremely well on the run, and to complete over 70% of your balls and have a 29 to 3 touchdown to interception ratio in your first year as a starter, I mean that's hard to do no matter what your supporting cast is. So they've done a great job with him and he's obviously picked up the offense quickly, but he has a really good arm and he's very athletic. Speaking of quarterbacks, the way you defended Sam Hartman after the Louisville game was more than necessary because I think what you reminded a lot of people that even in media, certainly in football, people, mostly, most people default to what's most convenient and easy and it can be lazy at points just to say, oh we had three interceptions, well it's Wisconsin all over again or it's the ACC Championship game. He had a tough game on Saturday too against NC State.

What did the film show you about some of the areas you want to sharpen this week from Sam's game? Well, bottom line as a program, we can't turn the football over. And over the last five, six, seven years, we've been one of the best teams in the country. I think we're fourth in the country over a six year period of winning the turnover margin. And we lost it eight to one against Louisville and we lost it three to nothing against NC State. And turnovers sometimes are the quarterback and there's a throw or two that I think Sam would like to have back. But sometimes the throw is rushed because of pressure and NC State did a very good job of bringing a lot of pressure and it was effective. At times our routes weren't as clean and often turnovers are a result of just not executing with detail and we did that across the board. When you play good football teams in the last two weeks, we've played two good football teams in the road in tough environments and you've got to play at a high level and you've got to play with detail and across the board we haven't played with that detail.

And we have the same challenge this week when you play a team that's eight and one and as explosive as North Carolina is, it forces you to play at a high level and then we've got to rise up and meet that challenge if we're going to win this game. Dave Claussen, given how big of a Talking Heads fan you are, have you ever come close to meeting David Byrne? No, no. I've seen him in concert. I saw the band Talking Heads in concert when I was in high school. I saw him at the University of Buffalo.

It was, I want to say like 1983 or 1984 or 1982, somewhere in there when they did the Stop Making Sense tour. But then I went up to New York and saw the American Utopia, which was his Broadway show and there you get pretty close to him. But no, I've never had a chance to meet him and I certainly have listened to podcasts that he's on and he's a very interesting person, extremely creative and he's a great performer. So I've enjoyed his music for decades. You inspired me to actually watch the Stop Making Sense docuseries or whatever, the documentary slash show that they put out a long time ago.

And yeah, man, you're right. It's about as good as it gets from an entertainment perspective. How high up would David Byrne rank on the list of celebrities you'd like to have dinner with? Oh, he'd probably be in the top five just because I've listened to his music.

I've never really sat down and thought about that. I'm not a, you know, one of those people that I enjoy the people I work with. I enjoy my family and meeting celebrities and doing those types of things isn't real high on my list, but that would be a thrill to meet him someday. Dave Claussen, you're a celebrity in your own right. Keep up the great work and we'll see you Saturday night in Winston-Salem. Thanks for doing this. Okay. Thanks, Josh. Take care and appreciate you having me on.