Aug. 8, 2008
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - The Wake Forest football team closed out a week of practices on Friday evening with an approximately two hour session at the Doc Martin Football Practice Complex. The Deacons will conduct their first scrimmage of the summer on Saturday, before enjoying a day off on Sunday. "I thought we had a good practice today," head coach Jim Grobe said. "We had exams today and we have exams tomorrow. We got good work out of our players. We didn't want to do too much tonight with exams tomorrow and a scrimmage tomorrow night." The practice included individual position drills and 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills. Several segments of practice were allotted for special teams work. Grobe was pleased with what he saw from his special teams units on Friday night. "It was a great night from the special teams perspective," Grobe added. "We covered every special team and we'll get some good film from this. I thought it was really a good night for our coaches to get a chance to look at our special teams." With the loss of three starters from last year's team, the offensive line is one area of the Deacon football team that will have a different look from last year. And, according to offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Steed Lobotzke, that's not a bad thing. "I think we're as mobile as we've ever been up front," said Lobotzke. "They're all 6-2, 6-3, they're all 275 to 290 pounds. They can all move their feet really well. They're just good, quick, tough guys, all five of them." The Demon Deacons will need to replace three starters on the offensive line in Academic All-America tackle Louis Frazier, tackle Matthew Brim and consensus All-America center Steve Justice.
While Riley Skinner leads the offense with 24 career games started, tackle Jeff Griffin is second with 16. Griffin started six games at right tackle and, with 628 offensive snaps, was second only to Justice in terms of playing time last year. Griffin entered fall camp as the starter at right tackle. Expected to fill Frazier's spot at left tackle is Joe Birdsong. The redshirt junior started seven times in 2007 including six at right tackle and one at left tackle. Birdsong missed three games late in the year with an ankle injury but still graded out at nearly 87 percent, the third-highest total on the team. Barrett McMillin showed his versatility in 2007 by earning starts at both guard and tackle. He started the final six games of the regular season and logged the third-highest number of snaps on the team with 621 while grading out at 82.6 percent. He is the top contender at right guard. The two youngest members of the offensive line will be Russell Nenon and Trey Bailey. Nenon played in all 13 games a year ago and saw his playing time increase dramatically as the season progressed. He registered 87 offensive snaps in the final two regular season games and played considerably in the Meineke Car Care Bowl win over Connecticut. Bailey has the biggest shoes to fill, those of Indianapolis Colts' draft pick Steve Justice. Being part of a championship team is nothing new to Bailey who prepped at Byrnes High in Duncan, S.C. and helped the Rebels to three straight state titles. Lobotzke isn't concerned about Bailey's ability to step into the void left by Justice. "Trey's big enough to mix it up with the nose guard and the tackle and he's athletic enough to pull and get out (in front of the runner)," said Lobotzke. "Trey was good enough to play in this league last year." Beyond the projected starters, a number of youngsters will be battling for playing time. Redshirt juniors Boomer Peterson and Gage Crews, along with redshirt freshmen Doug Weaver and Michael Hoag are strong contenders at guard and tackle. Ryan Britt is pushing Baily at center. And a number of freshmen will compete for playing time. Center Chance Raines, guard Joe Looney and tackle Garrick Williams all enrolled early and went through spring drills. Guard Gabe Irby arrived on campus in the fall. Coach Lobo doesn't get caught up in whether a player is a guard or a tackle. "The guards and tackles are the same to me," said Lobo. "We can flip them all. That's the best thing about them. I think that everyone of those guys is big enough and strong enough to mix it up with the nose in the three technique on the defensive line but athletic enough to handle the space vs. the defensive ends and pass block out there." Deacons to hold first scrimmage on Saturday night The Deacons will hold their first controlled scrimmage of the season on Saturday night at 7:30 at BB&T Field. Head coach Jim Grobe is looking forward to watching his first intrasquad match up of the season. "More than anything, (the scrimmage) will be a ball security kind of thing," said Grobe. "We get lulled to sleep a little bit out here. Our defensive guys typically pull off the guy carrying the ball. They need to get tackled to the ground a little bit and see if we can hang onto the ball. We had that same problem at the Orange Bowl when we weren't able to tackle our backs because they were so beat up. Once they started getting tackled, it was hard to secure the football. We just want to have some live competition and, hopefully, the offense can take care of the football and the defense can improve on their assignments." The first of the three scrimmages could have a bearing on playing time when the season opener rolls around. "We really want every position up for grabs," said Grobe. "Certainly, some of our veteran fifth-year guys, as long as they stay healthy, those positions aren't up for grab. You never know, from day to day, who's going to be healthy. So it's real important for us to develop an idea of where our depth is. Some places, we could come out of Saturday's scrimmage and get together for our Monday meeting and feel like we might need to move some players around. Right now, I think we're pretty comfortable with how we have everybody lined up. We've got to get to where we're pretty solid two-deep. "One of the real issues we have right now is that we have five or six true freshmen who look really good," continued Grobe. "We're going to keep looking at them. I don't have a problem playing them if they're the real deal and they're going to get 20 or 30 snaps per game. We've got a bunch of those guys right now who look pretty good but we'll know more after Saturday. "We've got some older guys that are hurt right now and some of them, it looks like they may miss a week to two weeks. If we get these young guys two more weeks of work before the old guys get back in the mix, we could have a different rotation this fall. And once we commit to a young guy, we're not going to back up. So the old guys who are banged up right now have got to be really careful because they're going to lose a lot of reps if we have to play true freshmen at Baylor. "It's good for us to go to the stadium and have ACC officials," Grobe said. "Right now, the offensive line can hold every snap and nobody says anything to them. The defensive guys can interfere on every pass and nobody says anything to them. So it will be nice to have some guys keeping an eye on them much like we will when we go to Baylor." -WakeForestSports.com- |
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