My Take: Deacons back in a familiar position ... but differences are key

WINSTON-SALEM – Wake Forest has learned suddenly and unexpectedly that its starting quarterback will be out, thrusting what was a battle for the No. 2 QB role into a battle for who starts the season opener.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is – at least on the surface.

Wednesday morning’s news that star quarterback Sam Hartman is out indefinitely because of a non-football medical issue was a bombshell that resonated past the chain-link fencing of the practice fields at Wake Forest and onto the screens of anybody paying remote attention to college football on a national level.

Things weren’t quite to that scale in 2018, but some of the details align – and they’re the ones that led to a 19-year-old Hartman starting at Tulane.

As a refresher: Kendall Hinton was Wake’s starting quarterback in the summer of that year before a three-game suspension was announced in June. Jamie Newman and Hartman ended the spring in a dead heat to be his backup and sometime in the summer that became a battle to be the starter.

Mitch Griffis and Michael Kern ended the spring in a virtual tie – please, I beg of you, stop placing value on the spring game – and have been competing for the No. 2 spot in fall camp.

Supporting cast situations are similar too. Wake’s starting offensive line entering 2018 was virtually the same as 2017; Wake Forest has five returning starters this season, given Je’Vionte’ Nash was a starter before missing last season.

Two running backs with significant experience (Matt Colburn II and Cade Carney; Justice Ellison and Christian Turner), the return of the leading receiver (Greg Dortch; A.T. Perry), a tight end who hasn’t started but has played significant snaps (Jack Freudenthal; Blake Whiteheart).

The similarities are there – and then they stop.

“I just think all of those guys are at such a higher level than any of those guys were then,” coach Dave Clawson said.

Griffis and Kern have a combined five years already in the program, with Griffis entering his third, Kern his fourth season. Newman in 2018 had been in the program for two seasons, while Hartman had arrived in January of that year.

That losing a star quarterback this close to the season is a testament to the height and stability of Wake’s program four years later.

In the summer of 2018, it was a positive that Wake Forest had been to back-to-back bowl games and there was genuine curiosity of how far – given Clemson’s presence in the ACC’s Atlantic Division – the Deacons could realistically climb.

Asked and answered in last season’s 11-win campaign that featured a trip to the ACC championship game.

There have been hints of this in the past, but Clawson’s comments tracing back to 2018 brought to light perhaps the clearest version of this:

“You had a true freshman and you had a redshirt (sophomore),” Clawson said. “Now you’ve got a guy who’s been here for three and four years. What that does for the offense, we don’t have to limit the offense at all.

“Whereas back then, you’ve got an 18-year-old guy going out there playing college football for the first time and it’s a lot different.”

Wake Forest has lost its leader, a three-year captain who’s come to represent so many of the best qualities in Clawson’s program. The scariest part is … well, take your pick: That Hartman was in some sort of peril that required surgery within hours, if not minutes, of an off-day workout; or that there is no timeline for his return.

But the Deacons are not back in the starting blocks at QB like they were in 2018.

That 19-year-old freshman from back then helped elevate the program’s floor past dropping back to that point.