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Nick Tabacca (insert Winston-Salem smoking joke here) will join Dave Clawson's staff as the new offensive line coach, according to a report on coachingsearch.com. Tabacca joins the Demon Deacons from Ball State University where he served as offensive line coach/run game coordinator. He will replace Jonathan Himebauch, who was Wake Forest's offensive line coach for the past two seasons. He is only 32 years old, so I expect him to provide a unique perspective to the coaching staff that perhaps has been missing over the past several seasons.
Tabacca has coached multiple offensive linemen who earned All-MAC honors. Last season Wake Forest averaged less than three yards per carry, which ranked 119th out of the 125 teams in college football. Tabacca's unit at Ball State in 2012 was sensational and had the 11th best adjusted sack rate in the country. They were also 3rd nationally in stuff rate, which is the amount of times a back was tackled at or behind the line of scrimmage. This appeared to be a decision made on some advanced metrics, which is something very refreshing to see. You can find more information here.
We welcome coach Tabacca to Winston-Salem and look forward to watching him groom our offensive linemen into All-ACC caliber players. He has a good foundation to build around in freshman all-american center Cory Helms in addition to other underclassmen.
You can follow coach Tabacca on Twitter here.