It sounded good in theory.

Wake Forest’s football team would be light on experience but wouldn’t be a young team. That was the summer selling point of optimism.

The former has mattered so much that it’s tough to remember the latter — though it’s really only applicable on one side of the ball.

Of the 15 Deacons who have played at least 100 offensive snaps this season, eight have taken more snaps in four games than they had in their careers before this season (per Pro Football Focus). Those eight are across each position — one quarterback, one running back, one wide receiver, two tight ends and three offensive linemen.

There are 14 defensive players who have played at least 100 snaps; none of them has eclipsed his career snap total.

Is there any mystery left to why one side of Wake’s team is wildly inconsistent and the other is trying to clean up the occasional gaffe?

“When you’re a guy that’s playing, it’s not something that you can just show flashes of. You have to put it together for 12 weeks straight,” said fifth-year receiver Taylor Morin, one of the most-experienced players on Wake's offense. “That’s the biggest adjustment from being a guy that’s on scout team, being a younger guy that makes plays during practice to being a guy able to do that day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out.”

It’s one thing to be experienced within a program; it’s another to be an experienced college football player.

The culture of Wake’s program isn’t poor. This isn’t a rotting-from-within problem — at least, it doesn’t feel like that from the outside perspective and there aren’t hints of that from within the complex.

There’s just no way to know how players will handle elevated roles, and the first month of the season highlighted the difficulty that comes in projecting that.

“No,” Morin said flatly when asked if players could understand the level of consistency required before being in these positions. “It’s something that’s harped on in our program and is something that, when I came in, the older guys told me was very important.

“But you don’t understand how difficult and challenging that is.”

And there’s the catch-22 of it. You can be mature and well-versed in the ways of a program, but you’re never fully equipped to handle the challenges of college football until you’ve played a significant number of snaps of college football.

This was coach Dave Clawson in July: “So we have guys that maybe haven't played a lot, but they've been in our program for three, four, five years, and now they're having their opportunity to play. There's still a maturity of our team. We're not as experienced, but we'll get that experience, and I think we'll be in really good shape.”

And this was Clawson three days ago: “They’re plenty talented, I don’t think they lack for ability. We’re just not playing as cohesively as we need to. It’s our job as coaches to get them there. And you just hope that as they’re getting this experience, that some of that stuff, they realize the detail it takes to be a really good football player at this level against other good players.”

Everybody says things in the summer that sound good. They don’t call it optimism season because the top programs all think they’re going unbeaten; they call it that because even the ones you know will be bad talk about competing top their conferences.

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Here’s a primer on what you need to know for Saturday’s game:

Time: 3:30 p.m.

Location: Memorial Stadium, Clemson, S.C.

TV: ACC Network.

Announcers: Chris Cotter (play-by-play), Mark Herzlich (analyst) and Sherree Burruss (sidelines).

Radio link: Listen to the crew that knows Wake Forest best.

Forecast: Low-70s and sunny at kickoff, mid-60s by game’s end, winds around 8-10 mph.

Series; last meeting: Clemson leads 70-17-1; Clemson won 51-45 in double OT last season.

Records: Wake Forest 3-1, 0-1 ACC; Clemson 3-2, 1-2.

Stat to watch: 18 | 21.

The first number is how many sacks Wake Forest has officially allowed; the second number is how many sacks Clawson has calculated the Deacons have allowed.

There’s a breakdown from Clawson here that helps explain how much of a systematic failure Wake Forest has on offense, rather than it simply being a case of Mitch Griffis holding the ball for too long.

“I broke it down, it’s more like 21 sacks,” Clawson said. “You’d say, ‘Geez, 21 sacks? Boy, your O-line must be playing horribly.’ They’ve only given up nine of them.

“The running backs have given up five of them. The tight ends have given up two of them. And then about five or six of them, the quarterback has held on to the ball too long.”

The most-glaring hole in Wake’s first four games is how much pressure its quarterback has faced. It’s fixable, per Clawson and at least one starter on the offensive line.

“This is Mitch’s first year playing,” offensive tackle DeVonte Gordon said. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re blocking good for him at all times. Two seconds might not be enough, whatever it is, no matter what’s going on.”

Clemson is in the middle of the pack nationally with 11 sacks — but there’s cause for concern from Wake’s side of things. After the Tigers didn’t have a sack against Duke in the opener, they had two in each of the next three games, and then piled up five sacks against Syracuse last weekend.

Quote of the week: “That’s something that we talked about as a unit, just remembering that feeling in the locker room, that we left too many things out to chance.” – safety Malik Mustapha on whether last season’s double overtime loss to Clemson provides extra motivation going into this year’s game

Opposing offensive player to watch: Receiver Tyler Brown (No. 6).

In less-than-ideal circumstances, Clemson might have found its next star receiver.

Brown has stepped into a void because of an injury to Antonio Williams, the Tigers’ leading receiver last year who’s missed the last two games.

In these past two games, the 5-11, 170-pound Brown has a combined 14 catches for 237 yards (16.9 yards per catch). Nine of those catches, for 153 yards, came last weekend against Syracuse. It’s the most receiving yards for a Clemson freshman since Justyn Ross had 153 against Alabama in the national championship game to end the 2018 season.

Brown has worked almost exclusively out of the slot, so the assignment will be with Wake’s nickels and safeties. He hasn’t dropped a pass and has caught 21 of 25 targets, per Pro Football Focus.

Opposing defensive player to watch: Defensive tackle Tyler Davis (No. 13).

DJ Uiagalelei was the Tigers’ most-important offensive player in last season’s win at Wake Forest and Davis was that for Clemson’s defense.

The 6-2, 300-pounder had two sacks against Wake Forest in last season’s instant classic. On the Deacons’ last possession of regulation, they had two first downs and had nearly reached the 50-yard line when Davis recorded a first-down TFL on Justice Ellison, and then a second-down sack to derail Wake’s chance of winning the game before overtime.

Davis is coming off a two-sack game against Syracuse. He is the Tigers’ highest-graded defender (79.0) who’s played at least 25% of their snaps (159 of 328). Davis’ eight QB pressures are fourth-most on the team, and per PFF, he has 13 tackles without missing one.

Young Deacon to watch: Running back Demond Claiborne (No. 23).

What’s the simplest way Wake Forest can keep Griffis upright? Create big plays in the running game.

Who’s the most likely player to create such plays?

You get the idea.

An upset becomes possible if Wake’s offense finds some balance. Claiborne’s breakaway speed should be featured in a game like this; look for the Deacons to manufacture some touches in space for their home-run hitter of a running back.

Claiborne’s 14 runs of at least 10 yards are twice as many as any other Wake Forest player (Ellison and Griffis both have seven). Claiborne’s 18 missed tackles forced are twice as many as the next-closest Deacon (Ellison has nine), both per PFF.

Don’t forget about: Where’s Waldo.

A little bit of shameless self-promotion here.

You’re going to want to pay attention to the pre-game availability updates. There’s always a hint of surprise when Wake Forest emerges from its off week and is without so-and-so, who just played a ton of snaps in the last game.

In related news, it’s worth remembering Ellison hobbled off of the field with an ankle injury toward the end of the Georgia Tech loss.

Granted, Where’s Waldo is only going to happen if I can get into the stadium in a timely fashion. When 80,000 people are trying to get to the same place and there’s one two-lane road into said place, well, that’s a personal hell and isn’t conducive to early arrivals.

Prediction: Man … this isn’t going to be what you want to read if you’re looking for optimism.

Wake’s chance to beat Clemson was last year and the Deacons took the air out of the ball.

If you ask me, that’s part one of why that loss is so difficult to digest. Sam Hartman had Wake’s offense firing on all cylinders and they just decided to let Clemson’s defensive alignment — not actual performance — dictate that they start running the ball.

Part two of the reason is that Wake’s last chance to knock off Clemson while it was the class of the ACC. By the slimmest of margins, Florida State has reclaimed that throne. Wake Forest will get a shot at the Seminoles at the end of the month; it’s hard to feel optimistic about that one, given what we’ve seen so far.

As far as a prediction? Really going out on a limb here … I don’t see this going too well for the Deacons.