Dave Clawson has done this before, having flipped dire situations at Fordham, Richmond and Bowling Green on their heads in four years or less, having lifted those left-for-dead programs to postseason play. Even before this season, his third at Wake Forest, he declared that, after consecutive 3-9 campaigns, there was nothing that surprised him about his Demon Deacons, that he knew exactly what he signed up for.
Clawson’s track record speaks for itself, but what about his players’ resolve? What about that of his quarterback, who won the starting job after two months on campus, turned into a human pinata by getting sacked 45 times behind a green offensive line in 2014, then saw his gig turn into something of a timeshare a year later with Kendall Hinton?