The Wake Forest Demon Deacons will search for their new Head Coach this off-season. Dave Clawson, coming off his 11th season, announced this Monday he’s stepping away from the Head Coaching position after 11 seasons.
“Coaching at Wake Forest has been the honor of my career…After completing my 25th season as a head coach and 36th-straight in college football, the timing is right for me and my family to step away into this new role within Wake Forest University,” Clawson announced in a statement.
Clawson was hired as Wake Forest’s Head Coach in December 2013 after five years as Bowling Green‘s Head Coach. He was preceded by Jim Grobe, who head coached at Wake Forest from 2001-2013. Grobe’s last five years as The Demon Deacons’ Head Coach featured losing seasons. The most remarkable of that stretch was in 2011 after they went 6-7 and lost in the Music City Bowl vs. Mississippi State.
Clawson concludes his tenure at Wake Forest with an overall record of 67-69 and seven consecutive bowl appearances between 2016-2022. He exits the position voluntarily, similarly to how Grobe did in 2013 when he resigned.
Clawson Exits Following Two Subpar Years
The Wake Forest Demon Deacons finished with a 4-8 (2-6 in conference play) overall record this season falling short of becoming bowl-eligible. Clawson’s final season ended with a third-to-last finish in the ACC. Needless to say, this year’s season hardly featured a notable win for Wake Forest. Perhaps the most successful game the Demon Deacons played this season was their win against a 6-6 North Carolina State.
The Demon Deacon’s 2023 effort was quite similar. They ended with an overall 4-8 record (1-7 in conference play) and placed last in the ACC. Notably, the last time Clawson took Wake Forest to a bowl game was in 2022 when they won against Missouri in The Gasparilla Bowl 27-17.
Wake Forest Struggled With Retaining Players as NIL Deals Courted Players to Other Schools
Clawson’s departure comes a few years after NIL was formally implemented into the college football landscape. As recently as 2023, Clawson did publicly express challenges his program faced relating to NIL and tampering.
This past 2024 off-season, Wake Forest lost two prominent receivers, Jahmal Banks and Wesley Grimes, to Nebraska and NC State via the transfer portal. In 2023 both players combined for 79 receptions and 992 yards. Statistically, Banks and Grimes were a couple of the most productive receivers the already struggling Wake Forest offense had.
The overall deficit of outgoing/incoming players this past 2024 offseason for The Demon Deacons was 10. In comparison, SMU, which had the best record in the ACC, only had incoming players (21) with 0 outgoing players. The dichotomy of how the two schools were affected by the transferred portal certainly raises alarms for other college football programs moving forward. The programs that lose more players than they retain every offseason to the transfer portal could perhaps be in trouble.
The issues Wake Forest has faced in the era of NIL and a “free agency” like transfer portal are certainly factors that could have influenced Clawson’s decision.
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