Grobe and Skinner begin preparing for Baylor

I was able to talk to both Jim Grobe and Riley Skinner about the preparations the team is beginning to make for the Baylor game. For Jim Grobe, the transition is not particularly easy:

Zach Smith: How does your thinking and planning have to change now that you're working specifically towards Baylor?

Jim Grobe: Well it's game plan stuff. It's a tough change, actually. We've really for the majority of the summer been going against each other, so it's been Wake Forest against Wake Forest, so we've been seeing a lot of things we do offensively, they've been seeing about all our defensive package, and it's really been hard because it's hard to focus on any one thing.

Now we've got to completely shift gears. In just about a week's time we've got to get ready for Baylor's schemes offensively and defensively. So it's a tough turn around and that's the deal. We've got to really kinda try to completely forget what we've seen for two weeks and start focusing just on Baylor.

ZS: Having Art Briles as a new coach there, what do you look at to figure out what it is you need to be preparing for, since you haven't seen him there before?

JG: You try to look at the things that he did in Houston and that the staff did, but that's a problem for us because he didn't bring all of his staff with him. I think he only brought a couple guys with him from Houston. His defensive coordinator stayed. So you just try to look at some of the things they did at other schools, where some of the other coaches came from.

You try to get little bits and pieces as you can of things that they did at their other schools, but the problem is they're going to get to Baylor and have a completely different group of athletes and you have to assume they're thoughts will change a little bit, so we've got to go to Baylor and basically figure them out when they start the game. You know, it's not a good feeling for coaches.

Starting on the road is always tough. All your mistakes are magnified; every turnover that you have, every bad kicking game play, every big play that the opponent has, the home crowd is into it and it makes it tough especially on young players. Then you throw in the fact that we're not really sure what they're going to do it makes it a really tough opener, in addition to having really good players with a really good coaching staff.

ZS: Does the fact that it's a Thursday night game play into that at all? Does it make it more difficult? Less difficult?

JG: It probably turned out to be a little bit better for us only from the standpoint that we've got plenty of time to get ready for the first game and then a little more time with the long flight back to get ready for Ole Miss. So I'd say playing Thursday, playing Saturday, probably doesn't matter as far as playing Baylor, but having a couple extra days to recover from a long trip will give us a chance to kind of catch our breath before we start getting ready for Ole Miss.

ZS: With school starting next week, how does that affect the players and their schedules and how they manage football and school and all that stuff? (Ed. note: terribly worded question)

JG: It will probably affect the young guys a little bit. The young guys are a little more flighty. They get all the new students back on campus and they go just a little bit crazy. The older guys have been around the block a couple times. I wouldn't think it would affect our older guys much at all.

It's a little bit of a transition only because with practice and lifting and meetings and those type things, we've been doing that without anything going on for a few days now, and we'll go back after classes start and do practice and be lifting in the afternoons, so it's a change. But because we're primarily relying on older players I think it's a little bit easier.

For Riley Skinner, the transition comes as a welcome change:

ZS: Now that you guys are starting to prepare for Baylor, how does your mindset and your preparation have to change? What are you doing differently now?

Riley Skinner: You know, it’s a lot more fun. We’re not going against our same team every day any more. We’re still practicing against them but we’re going against Baylor defense. We do a lot more scout team now with the other guys. Now in the quarterback room we’re game planning, seeing how our routes are going to work against Baylor, not compared to earlier this summer we’re scheming against how we can beat our defense.

So we’ve made a bunch of changes. We’ve dropped plays, we’ve added plays, and I think we have a pretty good package going in for them right now.

ZS: Do you think the last few weeks have prepared you well enough to be doing all that this week?

RS: Oh yea, definitely. We feel really good right now where we’re at. We’re getting all our guys back health-wise that have been banged up a little bit. Everyone’s understanding the offense really well. I think we had a really good preseason with just the player-oriented workouts. We made sure we got our offense down, got everybody on the same page, and that’s helped us a bunch because everyone’s kind of firing on all cylinders right now.

Looks like it's not just the fans who are ready for some football. I don't think anyone in the Wake Forest community can wait for Thursday night.