In its first two games, Wake Forest has won the coin flips and deferred possession until the start of the second half.
After watching first Baylor and then Stanford drive the opening kickoff straight downfield for touchdowns, Coach Jim Grobe is mulling over a new strategy.
Should Wake Forest win the coin flip Saturday against Elon, Grobe is considering deferring from deferring.
In other words, he'll probably take the ball to start the game.
"Probably we need to receive," Grobe said yesterday. "We haven't been too stout on defense deferring the first two times.
"That might be the easiest solution, just receive and then you can't give up the opening drive."
After the Deacons rallied from a 17-3 halftime deficit to knock off the Cardinal 24-17, Grobe began his news conference with an aside.
"Those guys are going to kill me," Grobe said. "It'd be a fun death watching that."
The tendency for starting slowly actually began last season, resulting in the Deacons falling behind in each of their last six games. In four of those games, they trailed by at least 10 points.
That Wake Forest rallied to win three of the six games begs the question of how well the Deacons could have done with faster starts. Grobe hopes to get his answer this week against Elon at BB&T Field.
"I do think we've got to seriously look at being a little bit more revved up at the start of the game, and not feeling like we get to give up the first drive as a learning experience," Grobe said. "I'd like to get out -- I don't know if we can because I think Elon's really talented -- of this catch-up mode we've been in of spotting teams good leads and seeing if we can catch them.
"Our coaches have got to find a way to get our kids to start faster. So what are we going to do to start faster? Probably our players need to be a little more focused and our coaches need to just make sure our players understand that we're not happy with starting slow. That's not a goal of ours, starting slow and come on strong at the end."
As for who will play tailback on the Deacons' first possession, that remains to be seen. Senior Kevin Harris has started the first two games, but this week's depth chart at least suggested a change might be in the works by listing the first-team tailback as Harris or junior Josh Adams or sophomore Brandon Pendergrass.
Harris has 12 carries for 62 yards, Adams 13 for 63 yards and Pendergrass seven for 29 yards.
"If they keep doing like they're doing, we don't really care who starts and all that," Grobe said. "They may disagree. They may care. But as long as we're getting production out of all three guys…. I think that helped us in the second half the other day. Our guys, when they did go it, were fresh and bouncing around and running hard.
"But throughout the course of the game, they're all going to get snaps."
Grobe said that the decision of who will start this week will be left to Billy Mitchell, the assistant who coaches the running backs.
"That's Mitch's deal," Grobe said. "I thought he did a really nice job Saturday mixing those guys up.
"It's fun to see those guys competing right now. And I think they like each other, so it's a good situation. They're patting each other on the back when they're doing good stuff. It's pretty healthy right now."
dcollins@wsjournal.com
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