Transition is part of the college football coaching lifestyle. Transitioning to a new school on the other side of the country with no previous or current ties to the new home makes the challenge even bigger. There are a lot of eyes on new Wake Forest head coach Jake Dickert as he makes the transition from Pullman, Washington to his new home in Winston-Salem. Dickert went one-on-one with Last Word to talk about what the first couple of months in the new job have been like.
Dickert was named the head coach of the Demon Deacons after a hastily planned retirement/resignation announcement from Dave Clawson who had spent 11 years as the head coach at Wake. Dickert’s wife and kids were at the introductory press conference. Good thing they got the group photos at that event because time together since then has been sparse.
The family is back in Pullman while the kids finish out the school year. They have come out to North Carolina a couple of times. Dickert has not been back to Pullman since he took the Wake Forest job in mid-December. He has spent every day of his time putting his stamp on a new version of Wake Forest football.
Wake’s Jake Dickert Goes One-on-One with Last Word
The On-Field Transition
That includes rebuilding a roster through the transfer portal and high school recruiting. Wake lost 14 players to the portal around the timing of Clawson stepping down. No one left after the announcement of Dickert as the new head coach. The flip side is he signed 22 players out of the portal to go with 23 high school signees. The high school recruits were a combination of Clawson and Dickert recruits.
The most notable part of the Dickert roster will look the same as the Clawson roster. Running back Demond Claiborne will return for another season at Wake. Dickert mentioned Claiborne several times during our interview with him, making it clear what a vital element he will be to the offense. “What a great way to start your tenure than to have an All-American running back like Demond Claiborne,” Dickert said. “That run game is going to be diverse. It’s going to be attacking.”
We have seen the end of the slow mesh at Wake Forest. Dickert gave Clawson credit for the innovation and how it allowed Wake to be competitive on a large scale despite recruiting obstacles. He joked that they could put a tombstone somewhere around the practice to honor the slow mesh.
Dickert intends to run what he calls a power-spread offense. It is quarterback-driven with speed on the outside and relies upon a running back who can run downhill like Claiborne. “It’s going to be a very versatile attack,” he explained. “We have to shape it to our personnel.”
The Personnel
That personnel is decidedly new at several key positions, including wide receiver and quarterback. “It was the number one thing that we had to attack,” he said of the quarterback position. The Deacs return no one with any significant game experience at the position. In Spring camp he expects to see what he called, “A more competitive upgrade.” He pulled two experienced quarterbacks from the transfer portal in Robby Ashford who is on his fourth school, and Deshawn Purdie coming over from UNC Charlotte. They will join redshirt freshman Jeremy Hecklinski in what Dickert suggested should be a high-energy quarterback competition in Spring. “No one’s allowed to have a down day because you better be competing at everything we do.”
Within the class of portal transfers, Dickert pulled in eight of his former Washington State players. He also got a handful of high school players who had been committed to the Cougars. “It’s still a relationship game,” Dickert explained. He said that as the game has become transactional in recent years he wants his staff to be transparent with the recruits and their families. “You’ve got to mentor them. You’ve got to love them. And you’ve got to tell them the truth.”
There is another portal window in April, the one most coaches hate as Spring camp comes to an end. Dickert sees it as an opportunity to shore up some positions where he did not get the depth he wanted in his first go-round. Tight end and the defensive secondary are the most likely targets.
The Journey
All of this is new for Dickert. While he had success at Washington State, he is taking over a program in a part of the country with which he had little familiarity, in a conference that has its own identity issues right now. The transition is not lost on him.
“I was never meant to be here,” Dickert said referring to life as an FBS coach in a Power Four conference. Dickert came from a high school graduating class of 27 people in Kohler, Wisconsin, (yes, named after the plumbing apparatus company as it is the biggest employer in the town). “My thought was I was always going to be a high school football coach and math teacher.”
Instead, he went on to play DIII football at Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He later joined the staff as a grad assistant before getting what he told us was his “Big break,” joining Craig Bohl’s staff at North Dakota State as a grad assistant. He credits the recently retired Bohl as his mentor. The two worked together again at Wyoming. Bohl was the head coach and Dickert was hired as the safeties coach and eventually became the defensive coordinator.
Dickert became the defensive coordinator at Washington State in 2020. He took over as interim head coach in 2021 when Nick Rolovich was fired for failure to comply with COVID mandates for state employees. The interim tag was taken off and Dickert was the head coach for 2022-2024. He was at the helm of Washington State as the Pac-12 dissolved in its former iteration, losing its Power Five status. Dickert said the climb to Wake Forest was, “Done the hard way.”
Mentorship
He credits Bohls with teaching him, “How to build programs.” Dickert said he learned that it comes through toughness and discipline and attention to detail. He also credits Clawson for giving him the lay of the land at Wake Forest during the transition. “Coach Clawson’s wisdom is beyond my years,” Dickert said. “He just told me exactly like it is and why he loved it there.” Dickert added, “You can tell it came from strictly an angle that he wants to help and he wants us to be successful, period.”
As we were doing the one-on-one interview with Dickert, the athletic directors and school presidents/chancellors of all the SEC and Big 10 schools were meeting in New Orleans. They were there to discuss formative changes to college sports, the college football playoffs, and more. We spoke with Dickert at length about those topics and will have more on that part of the conversation later this week.
Main Image: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
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