Jake Dickert’s Biggest Recruiting Work

While there will be a lot of new faces at the start of Wake Forest Spring Camp next week, it is the most familiar of faces that will be so noteworthy. New head coach Jake Dickert’s biggest recruiting work meant keeping the focal point of the offense. That meant making sure running back Demond Claiborne was coming back for another year at Wake Forest.

Jake Dickert’s Biggest Recruiting Work

Claiborne was Wake’s leading rusher in 2024 with a tick over 1,000 yards and 11 touchdowns running the ball. And that was in an offense that part RPO and part slow mesh. There were reliable rumors toward the end of the season that he was a likely candidate to transfer at the end of the season.

During the transition time with Dave Clawson leaving as head coach and Jake Dickert coming in, there were enough cryptic social media messages from Claiborne to keep people guessing.

Claiborne Stays Put

On December 14^th he posted on X that he was coming back. Two days later, Wake announced that Clawson was stepping down after 11 seasons as head coach. There was a series of posts that left it an open question as to Claiborne’s status.

Dickert was determined to be heard with his sales pitch. He met with Claiborne the same day he was being introduced as the new Demon Deacons head coach. He met with him some more after that. And as Wake was wrapping up its recruiting and transfer portal class, it was announced that Claiborne was in fact coming back. The transfer window came and went with Claiborne still in a Wake uniform.

It is clear how important this was to Dickert. “What a great way to start your tenure than to have an All-American tailback in Demond Claiborne,” Dickert told us a couple of weeks ago.

In fact, in our conversation with the new coach, the return of Claiborne and what his role in the new offense will be was a consistent topic in our time together. The vision for the offense is complex and multi-faceted. The vision for what Claiborne brings is much simpler. “It starts with the run game,” he said. That run game is going to be diverse. It’s going to be attacking. It’s going to get on the perimeter. And it’s going to be downhill.”

Dickert dubbed it a versatile spread attack. There are seven quarterbacks going into camp vying for the starting position. The likelihood of all seven remaining on the Wake roster after Spring camp is low. It would be low for any school. But while there will be battles waged for the signal caller, for the receiver spots, (as Wake lost a lot to the portal), and for the ability to shore up the offensive line, the starting running back position has no question mark around it in terms of the starter.

Claiborne’s Future

Claiborne averaged 19 carries per game in 2024. His high for the season was 24 carries for 60 yards in the win at UConn. He also had back to back games with 23 carries. Claiborne battled nagging minor injuries that come with the position. And some of the low carry totals were due to Wake Forest playing from behind so much, creating a need to open the offense up. There were a number of games where he was all but absent from the offense in the fourth quarter of games.

But if you buy into Dickert’s plan, his top recruit of the off-season will need to be physically ready to be the focal point of the new offense. “We’re going to get Demond Claiborne running as fast as he can downhill and watch that man go.”

That’s about as definitive as you can get on a game plan when it is only March and the start of Spring camp is still a little less than a week away.