Dave Clawson
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 5-4
Bowling Green’09L’12LWake Forest’16W’17W’18W’19L’20L’21W’22W
Show all 9 games
2009Humanitarian BowlL 42-43
2012Military BowlL 20-29
Wake Forest
2016Military BowlW 34-26
2017Belk BowlW 55-52
2018Birmingham BowlW 37-34
2019Pinstripe BowlL 21-27
2020Duke's Mayo BowlL 28-42
2021Gator BowlW 38-10
2022Gasparilla BowlW 27-17
Report card
Offense carries it: 52nd percentile offense, below the median defense at 49th.
Wake Forest, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Defense
Each season is his team’s percentile among every team with that stat (the share it beat), averaged over his completed seasons here; a mid-season takeover year and the season in progress aren’t graded. Letters: A+ 90th percentile and up, A 80, B+ 70, B 60, B− 50, C+ 45, C 40, C− 30, D 15, F below.
Fans
No fan talk about him on our list yet. His record is on Career.
Stats
Big games
Pick a job to see its years on their own.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
1-4 against his rivals at Bowling Green. Just 2-3 against Frank Solich.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
Just 1-4 against Mack Brown.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
1-4 against his rivals. Just 1-4 against Mack Brown.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
ATS is his record against the spread: did his team beat the closing betting line, winning by more than it or losing by less? Lines start in 2013; a dash means fewer than 6 of those games had one. One-score games carry no spread record: a big favorite that wins a close game has almost always failed to cover, so that number would say nothing about the coach.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
9,850 run and pass snaps at Wake Forest, 2014–2024, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Six numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 7 ranked Wake Forest classes of his own have averaged #60 nationally — best #52, worst #71.
His class — he had the full signing cycle
Rank is each signing class’s national recruiting rank (#1 is best). Only a class he had a full signing cycle to build counts as his.
Followed him here
Bowling Green→
Wake Forest2014Players who transferred from his old program to his new one through the portal in the same year he made the move. Name-matching across data sources misses some, so every count is a floor, not an exact number.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2024 roster arrived on his watch — 123 of 123 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 8% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
This tenure spans the 2021 transfer-portal tracking floor: seasons before 2021 structurally cannot be classified portal-vs-not (they land in 'unknown' below), so the portal-share figure understates how many pre-2021 arrivals might have been transfers under the pre-portal-tracking transfer rules.
10% of his 111 new players since 2022 came through the portal (FBS programs, same seasons: 18%) — the 8th-lowest share of the 68 Power 4 programs. His share was 8% in 2022 and 14% in 2024.
Graded on the players who arrived and the players who left together, his portal seasons came out worse than most FBS programs’ in all 3 seasons graded. our read
Each player counts once, in the season he arrived. 2021, the first season of portal tracking here, is left off because its arrival records look incomplete (about 31 new players per FBS team, against 52 in 2022). Portal grade: the site’s position-value-weighted scoring (the same engine as the Portal Heat feed and the “Who won the portal” grade): the value of the players who came in minus the value of the ones who left, ranked against every FBS program’s grade that same season. A season with fewer than 4 transfers in and out is not graded.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his Wake Forest rosters have averaged 5 lb lighter than the FBS average (2014–2024) — lighter than 84% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Wake Forest’s line averaged 4 lb heavier than the FBS average.
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 36 of 193 signees (19%) across his 2014–2024 tenure, drawn from 24 states in all. Next: NC (35).
64% of his signees come from GA and its 5 border states (NC 35, FL 28, SC 12, TN 7, AL 5).
Off this map: 7 signees to the west (TX 4, CA 2, others).
- median hometown distance
- 299 mi
- within 100 mi
- 14%
- within 500 mi
- 69%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 4%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
The NFL pipeline
The NFL pipeline
players drafted into the NFL off his teams here. He brought in 12 of them himself; 3 arrived under Jim Grobe. 1 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | R4.24 | Malik Mustapha | Safety |  San Francisco 49ers | |
| 2024 | R5.39 | Caelen Carson | Cornerback |  Dallas Cowboys | |
| 2024 | R7.10 | Michael Jurgens | Center |  Minnesota Vikings | |
| 2023 | R3.26 | Kobie Turner | Defensive Tackle |  Los Angeles Rams | |
| 2023 | R6.18 | A.T. Perry | Wide Receiver |  New Orleans Saints | |
| 2022 | R4.35 | Zach Tom | Offensive Guard |  Green Bay Packers | |
| 2022 | R6.36 | Ja'Sir Taylor | Cornerback |  Los Angeles Chargers | |
| 2021 | R2.29 | Carlos Basham Jr. | Defensive End |  Buffalo Bills |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | R5.33 | Justin Strnad | Outside Linebacker |  Denver Broncos | |
| 2020 | R6.16 | Justin Herron | Offensive Tackle |  New England Patriots | |
| 2019 | R4.22 | Phil Haynes | Offensive Guard |  Seattle Seahawks | |
| 2018 | R2.22 | Jessie Bates III | Safety |  Cincinnati Bengals | |
| 2018 | R6.03 | Duke Ejiofor | Defensive End |  Houston Texans | recruited under Jim Grobe |
| 2017 | R5.24 | Marquel Lee | Outside Linebacker |  Oakland Raiders | recruited under Jim Grobe |
| 2015 | R1.16 | Kevin Johnson | Cornerback | Houston Texans | recruited under Jim Grobe |
A pick counts toward his tenure when the player’s final college season was one he coached, a checkable rule rather than a claim about who developed the player. A blank note means the player is on a verified roster and arrived on his watch. “Estimated” means no roster record, so the final season is assumed to be the year before the draft.
News
No outlet on our list has written about him by name yet. His record is on Career.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
4th-best Wake Forest tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Jim Grobe (2001–2013) · succeeded by Jake Dickert (2025–now).
| Season | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||||||
| Record | 3-9 | 3-9 | 7-6 | 8-5 | 7-6 | 8-5 | 4-5 | 11-3 | 8-5 | 4-8 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | — | — | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | — | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||||||||||
| OC | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | Warren Ruggiero | |
| DC | Mike Elko | Mike Elko | Mike Elko | Jay Sawvel | Jay Sawvel | Lyle Hemphill | Lyle Hemphill | Lyle Hemphill | Brad Lambert | Brad Lambert | Brad Lambert | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||||||
| Offense | 0 | 9 | 7 | 83 | 57 | 29 | 60 | 86 | 70 | 15 | 15 | |
| Defense | 67 | 45 | 79 | 43 | 42 | 42 | 41 | 50 | 19 | 19 | 21 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 50.2 | 48.4 | 44.4 | 50.0 | 46.1 | 44.2 | 37.4 | 48.5 | 50.5 | 38.4 | 45.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 50.0 | 42.9 | 34.5 | 42.7 | 35.8 | 38.0 | 35.7 | 38.5 | 38.6 | 39.2 | 46.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 35.3 | 20.6 | 22.0 | 28.6 | 40.9 | 30.6 | 32.3 | 29.3 | 45.0 | 31.0 | 42.9 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
Brings in bigger-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
9th-best Bowling Green tenure of 14 by the numbers.
Followed Gregg Brandon (2003–2008) · succeeded by Dino Babers (2014–2015).
| Season | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 7-6 | 2-10 | 5-7 | 8-5 | 10-3 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | — | — | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | 58 | 4 | 20 | 7 | 96 | |
| Defense | 16 | 29 | 34 | 96 | 68 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 57.8 | 54.6 | 47.2 | 51.8 | 37.6 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 53.6 | 35.1 | 49.0 | 45.2 | 26.9 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 27.3 | 46.9 | 45.9 | 31.2 | 25.8 | |
1 NFL Draft pick: Christopher Jones (2013)
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
3rd all-time at Wake Forest
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+7.9 pts at Wake Forest · #277 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.