Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson offers his thoughts on Lane Kiffin, Jaxson Dart and the Rebels
WINSTON-SALEM, NC – Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson met with the media on this week for his weekly press conference as the Demon Deacons prepare to take on the No.5 Ole Miss Rebels Saturday.
Wake Forest is coming into the matchup against the Rebels 1-1 on the season after falling to Virginia, 31-30, in heartbreaking fashion last weekend.
“We gave up a 13-point fourth quarter lead,” Clawson said of his team’s loss. “It was very disappointing. I thought our offense was in a really good rhythm. I thought we threw and ran the ball well.”
Ole Miss rolls into Winston-Salem after going 2-0 to start the season.
“This week the challenge gets even tougher,” Clawson said.
“What a football team Ole Miss is. They have probably figured out a way to embrace college football in this day and age as well as anybody in the country.”
Coach Dave Clawson on Ole Miss
Clawson also turned his attention to Rebel quarterback Jaxson Dart.
“He’s a big, physical kid with a strong arm and is a great athlete. He’s really good,” the Wake coach commented. “The thing about it is they throw the ball down the field. In today’s football, there’s bubble screens and forward shuffles, but these guys play pitch and catch down the field. These aren’t throws that are traditionally high-completion throws. He’s a good player,” he continued.
“He just is in such command of the offense. The ball goes where it should, when it should. I think one of the things you want your quarterbacks to do is throw guys open, not throw ’em when they’re open. And he’s a great athlete, he’s got really good feet and he’s extremely accurate. I mean he’s completed 87% of his balls. I mean that’s hard to do on air… So I mean he’s legit. And if you look at Lane’s history with quarterbacks, he always seems to get the best out of whoever he has. When you have Matt Corral, he had a great year and he had a bunch of guys at Alabama and at USC. And so you have a guy with talent and a coach that knows how to coach him and that’s when you’re really good.”
Wake Forest head coach Clawson on Dart
Clawson also talked about how the Rebels have been so successful in the portal due to their ability to evaluate talent.
“You have to have an eye for talent. And they have evaluated extremely well,” Clawson explained. They’re players that they’ve brought in and some of these guys like Walter Nolen who’s the number one player in the country, that’s a little easier to say, Hey, that’s a guy we got to have. But their receiver, Tre Harris came from La Tech. And so what they’ve done is they’ve done a great job of evaluating,” Clawson added.
“I think 46 percent of their roster is transfers about a quarter of their roster just got there this year,” he also noted. “They have 35 transfers on the two deep and 27 are from Power Five schools. They took eight players from our league. Really it’s three things: it’s you have to have resources, eye for talent and coaching.”
Clawson gave the Rebel staff their due.
“Lane has a deserved reputation as one of the top offensive coaches in the country,” Clawson said. “His offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr., I think has been with him a long time.”
This season through the first two games Ole Miss has scored 128 points on offense.
“(Ole Miss) is averaging 64 points per game,” Clawson said. “(On defense) they have yet to give a touchdown. Where the coaching comes in is as fast as they play and wide open as they play…So last year they turned the ball over I think seven times the entire year. They only had one fumble they lost the entire year and they haven’t turned the ball at over this year. And so it’s not just throwing a lot of talented players out there when you’re that efficient and that careful with the football, there’s a lot of really good coaching going on as well.“
Coach Clawson
Clawson added the game against Ole Miss “will be one of the toughest challenges that we have had going back to some of those Clemson teams that have won the National Championship.”
Game Info
Ole Miss and Wake Forest will kickoff at 5:30 p.m. CT and the game can be seen on the CW.
Adam Brown
Adam Brown joins The Rebel Walk as the Managing Editor after being on the Ole Miss beat as a Sports Editor for over 11 years. He is a lifelong Oxford resident. Brown graduated from the University of Mississippi with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
Prior to The Rebel Walk, Brown was the sports editor of HottyToddy.com covering every Ole Miss sport and local high school sports in the community.
