Wake to scrimmage Saturday

Wake Forest has scheduled an intrasquad football scrimmage on Saturday at BB&T Field at 7:30 p.m. It's open to the public.

This will be the Demon Deacons first controlled scrimmage of the preseason, which opened Aug. 1. It's the first of three scheduled scrimmages, offering coach Jim Grobe a chance to evaluate the progress of his team as it prepares for the season-opener at Baylor on Aug. 28.

Grobe said he welcomes the contact, knowing the Deacs need to feel the sting of actual hits to awake them to the challenging season ahead. 

"We get lulled to sleep a little bit out there," Grobe said this week. "Our defensive guys typically pull off the guy carrying the ball. They need to get tackled to the ground a little bit and see if we can hang onto the ball."

While junior quarterback Riley Skinner and senior linebacker Aaron Curry are probably secure in their jobs, Grobe said the scrimmage could impact future playing time. He said certainly the jobs of some fifth-year seniors are not up for grabs, though he wants players to know that no position is secure.

 "You never know, from day to day, who's going to be healthy," Grobe said. "So it's real important for us to develop an idea of where our depth is."

Saturday's scrimmage could answer a few questions for  coaches. 

"Some places we could come out of Saturday's scrimmage and get together for our Monday meeting and feel like we might need to move some players around," he said. "Right now ... we're pretty comfortable with how we have everybody lined up. 

"We've got to get to where we're pretty solid two-deep." 

Depending on how they progress, freshmen such as offensive lineman Joe Looney, tight end Andrew Parker, corner back Terence Davis and corner back Kenny Okoro, could play themselves into the mix.

"We've got some older guys that are hurt right now and some of them it looks like they may miss a week to two weeks," Grobe said. "If we get these young guys two more weeks of work before the old guys get back in the mix, we could have a different rotation this fall. And once we commit to a young guy, we're not going to back up."