Wake Forest Demon Deacons
0
0
By: Les Johns
Jared Kaster knows what an offensive line is supposed to look like when it’s finished. He’s been building them long enough — from Houston Christian to Austin Peay to Washington State and now Wake Forest — to recognize the distance between where a group starts and where it can go. The 2026 Demon Deacon offensive line is early in that process.
“O-line play puts you in a slow cooker,” Kaster said during spring camp. “We turn you on and we grow you for a long time.”
Enjoyed being out and about in the community this week 🎩 pic.twitter.com/Un0RunYfAy
— Wake Forest Football (@WakeFB) July 24, 2026
He arrived in Winston-Salem in January 2025 as part of Jake Dickert’s inaugural staff, coming off a season at Washington State where he helped the Cougars to a historic 8-1 start and a top-20 AP Poll ranking, their highest since 2018. The offense he helped run there finished No. 11 nationally in scoring at 36.8 points per game.
Before that it was a year at Austin Peay, where he served as co-offensive coordinator and helped guide the Governors to a conference title, a top 10 FCS scoring offense and three all-conference offensive linemen.
His roots go deeper still — five seasons at Houston Christian, two as an offensive quality control coach at Texas Tech under Kliff Kingsbury and, before all of it, four seasons as a center for the Red Raiders, where he was a three-time All-Big 12 Honorable Mention selection, started 37 consecutive games and was voted a team captain in 2015.
Thanks for having us out today @StricklandBros pic.twitter.com/o9AkBV637w
— Wake Forest Football (@WakeFB) July 23, 2026
He knows the position from the inside out, which is part of what makes his patience with the process so genuine rather than just coaching-speak.
The results in his first season at Wake Forest were hard to argue. The Demon Deacon offensive line surrendered just 17 sacks after giving up 42 the previous year, a jump from 125th nationally to a top-20 ranking in the FBS. Offensive tackle Fa’alili Fa’amoe, guard George Sell and center Devin Kylany each earned Honorable Mention All-ACC recognition. The offense scored 30 or more points six times and averaged more than 28 points per game, its best output since 2022.
Now he’s retooling the unit around a different set of pieces, with tackle depth among the primary questions heading into the fall.
Impact leaders 👊 pic.twitter.com/ZULTwKYuri
— Wake Forest Football (@WakeFB) July 21, 2026
“It’s a little bit of a puzzle, trying to put the pieces where they go,” Kaster said. “Every year it’s a blank slate. You almost have to reset. But I think this group has done a great job of understanding that and going out there, not worrying about where they are, and just competing and growing as a unit.”
Will Way has emerged as a front-runner at center, and Kaster spoke positively about his leadership as the group works to establish an identity. But he was quick to note that no spots are locked in this early in the spring.
“I tell them there are no true starters right now,” he said. “You’re growing and you’re developing. Their role is to keep growing and keep advancing the craft.”
Kaster has been especially impressed with the growth of several returning offensive linemen, who arrived a season ago undersized, but have grown into their frames through the weight room and the training table.
“Those are young guys that believed in the process,” he said. “They get here soaking wet, 250 pounds. Now they’re at the threshold around 300. You see the growth from nutrition, you see the buy-in in the weight room, and you see the development on the field.”
The departure of experienced tackles accelerated that timeline whether anyone was ready for it or not, and Kaster is direct about what that means.
“Some of those guys leaving and graduating — sometimes that process has to speed up,” he said. “But you can’t go out there and think it’s just going to happen. You still have to believe in what we’re doing, what this program is built on. And that’s development. Trusting that and believing in that every day.”
What Kaster doesn’t want lost in the transition is the culture the unit built a year ago, the standard that carried a group of linemen from one of the worst sack-allowed rates in the country to one of the best.
“We don’t have to truly reset the culture,” he said. “The culture and the foundation were set last year. Now we’ve got to maintain that.”
The other thing Kaster is clear about is that development isn’t something that ends when the season starts.
“You never stop developing as an offensive lineman until you stop playing,” he said. “Through the whole season, you go back and look at how we ended last year and we kept consistently growing. It is a daily process — going out every day and knowing how to do your job one percent better than you did yesterday.”
Credit: https://godeacs.com/news/
About the Author
