Sam Hartman is the next Joe Namath??

Blake will open up against Elon on Thursday night.

That game will be on the ACC Network. And it will be, well, not our first chance, but our latest chance to see Mitch Griffiths. Griffiths. I don't know why I just butchered his name. The new quarterback because the old quarterback is now, I believe, Joe Montana. Sam Hartman and Notre Dame was a smash hit against what amounted to air in Dublin, Ohio.

Connor O'Neill from Deacon's Illustrated online and also Devil's Illustrated. He covers both Wake and Duke. Do you think the folks at Wake are a little tired? Not that they don't love Sam, but just tired about hearing how amazing Sam Hartman is and was against Navy?

I think it's a double-edged sword. I think part of it is they're happy for Sam. Like, it's not a situation where he only put in two or three years of development at Wake. He led Wake to one of their best seasons in school history. He spent five years there. He took a backseat and a redshirt in 2019 when he wasn't the starter and kind of played the loyal number two.

He certainly could have left then. He walked away with a degree, but yeah, I also think there's a part of it that's just like, okay, we know he's been retroactively named one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse here. He's Joe Montana.

That's what he is. I figured I'd take it a step further, but yeah, I mean, the Joe Montana stuff, the Heisman front-runner. As a Heisman voter, I'm always really pet peeved that we start talking about this in August when 14 teams have played already. There's 133 in the FBS. I'd vote for him right now over Caleb Williams.

Right now. Based on what I've seen in week one, they were both very good, by the way. Plus 1,800 on Sam Hartman. At least it was before the win over Navy, which was, again, sort of like air. Navy did not put up much of a resistance because they're not that good.

And that's all good. But that will just get us into talking about Griffiths and the way this offense works. There was some talk that he wanted to play in a pro-style offense. He didn't want to do all of the run-pass option. But all I kept thinking of was like 25 to 40 percent of NFL offenses are run-pass options now. Have you never watched the Philadelphia Eagles play? I'm just wondering, wait a second, they do that in the NFL, but it's okay.

It fit the narrative for them. Tell me about Mitch, and now minus a pretty talented wide receiver, what the offense is likely to look like for the Demon Deacons. Yeah, well, first of all, I'm right there with you, except I keep wanting to write Griffin instead of Griffiths and Griffiths.

But it's Griffiths. It's going to be the same offense with a little bit more run to it. And quarterback run, I mean. Mitch is a better runner than Sam.

I don't think there's any hurt feelings when I say that. Mitch is closer to John Walford than any of the three previous quarterbacks have been that have started games at Wake. And that's Kendall Hinton briefly, Jamie Newman, and Sam Hartman. Mitch is kind of, I hesitate to use the word sneaky athletic. You don't want to attach every cliche with the white quarterback to it. But he is, he'll get out in the open field and make some people miss. And that's what John had to his game. That's what John had when he led the offense to the 2017 success that they were when they were so efficient. And I'm not saying Mitch is going to step in for, you know, his first season as a starter and run it as effectively as John Walford did in 2017.

But you're going to see a lot of those wrinkles, you're going to see a lot more openness. You're going to see some throws over the middle by a smaller quarterback that it's always interesting to see how that'll work out. People always think that if you're not six, five, you can't throw over the middle because you can't see over the linemen.

And, you know, if you're a good enough quarterback, and you're playing in the ACC, you know how to manipulate pockets, you know how to change your throwing angles, you can you can get things off like that. Connor O'Neill is joining us here in the Adam Gold show. I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna move on to the next question.

It's fine. The you bring to mind how many good quarterbacks have been at Wake. I mean, we just Walford was with the Rams until he got hurt. Jamie Newman was a high profile transfer to Georgia. I mean, Hinton ended up playing he came for the Denver Broncos at quarterback when they were out of quarterbacks. What it really says is that Dave Clausen knows what the hell he's doing at Wake Forest, and now they're going to have to do this without one of the best wide receivers. I mean, if you look at a wide receiver, somebody was thought to be potential all ACC wide receiver in against Donovan Green is out.

How do they replace him? And where do they keep coming up with these outstanding athletes and receiver? So the first part is they're kind of blessed with the luxury of having two slots and only one place to play them. And so one of those slots Taylor Marin spent a good part of two years ago playing outside receiver.

So it's a pretty easy shift for him to just slide back to the outside. Keyshawn Williams has been a budding star for about a year now. He's going to get a chance to start games. He's been playing about 50% of the reps anyway.

They will not miss much of a beat. I don't mean that to sound like they're not going to miss Donovan Green. But if you're looking at one position on this roster, we could say, OK, let's pluck a starter out and he's going to be gone.

Receiver is probably the first place you look like they have the depth there and getting into the second part of your question. I mean, it's the development of Kevin Higgins, who's no longer the receiver's coach, but all these guys he's recruited. He's now the general manager of the team. He just did such a phenomenal job of identifying the multi-sport kids. A lot of these guys like Donovan Green was a great basketball player. Taylor Marin, I think, had some baseball in his background. Keyshawn Williams was a decent basketball player. Jamal Banks could have been a Division 1 basketball player at a mid-major. So you find these guys that have the athleticism and maybe haven't focused on football for the entirety of their athletic career. You get them into the program and get them dialed in on football. That's how you come up with these guys that are in the second and third year in the program and have breakout seasons.

Connor O'Neill is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show covers Wake Forest. Also covers Duke. We'll hit Duke before we get out of here. But I was just looking at Wake's schedule, not like I've just discovered it. The beginning of the schedule is gettable for them. And they probably need to be 4-0. Although the trip to Old Dominion might be sneaky difficult.

But their first four games they probably need to win because man, the remaining part of the schedule. A trip to Clemson. Florida State in Winston-Salem. Pitt in Winston-Salem. At Duke.

State. At Notre Dame. In terms of ACC teams, if you said that these are the top six or seven teams in the league, the only one of those they miss is North Carolina. And a lot of the tough ones are on the road. This is a very difficult schedule for the Demon Deacons.

Yeah. When you just knew who the teams were, you had a pretty good feeling of it would be tough. And then when you see the breakdown of having all four of the first games in September, and I guess one in August technically. And then everything else shifted to the back two-thirds.

You're like, oh man, that's grueling. They don't have a break there. Maybe that trip to Syracuse to end it all. By then. Strange things happen in the whatever it's called dome. And yeah, it's not a schedule that's set up very easy.

No, it is not. And once October rolls around and you start October in Death Valley against Clemson, and who knows how that goes, and Virginia Tech's the next week also on the road. But again, if you tried to cut the ACC in half, and the top seven and the bottom seven, other than North Carolina, I think Wake Forest is playing everybody else who I think is going to be in the top seven. Let me ask you quickly about the Blue Devils.

So just really only have time for one. Another sneaky athletic, to use another cliche player, is Riley Leonard, the quarterback for Duke, who, I mean, probably reminds a lot of people of Daniel Jones, another surprisingly athletic player. But what is his ceiling as a quarterback? I mean, I've got to think, you know, draft eligible quarterbacks.

He's probably not moving past Caleb Williams and Drake May, but I think even Phil Steele has him as the number three draft eligible quarterback this year. I don't necessarily know that means he's out the door. That's not the kind of guy Riley is. I think he'll evaluate that at some point in, you know, November or December.

But yeah, man, I've said all along, you know, hypotheticals are for losers. But if you go and put Josh Downs on his roster last year, I think we talk about Riley in the same ways that we talk about Drake in the season that he had. That's really how highly I think of him, how dangerous he is as a quarterback. I think all the anonymous Twitter accounts have finally come around on stopping the, do you know how underrated Riley Leonard is? He's the most underrated quarterback in the country.

I finally stopped seeing those because everybody's talked about him for the last month or so. So yeah, the ceiling is, you know, I'm not going to say it, but the ceiling is high. Yeah, I mean, he could be. Look, it's possible that when we get to the end of all this, he might, he could end up being the best quarterback in the ACC. And I'm not taking anything away from how good Drake May is, how good Jordan Travis is.

I mean, I agree. I think Leonard is dynamite if they can protect him. He's got some good receivers. The offense looks good. I mean, Duke's going to have to win a bunch of games too.

And their schedule, if you think Wake's schedule is hard, where do you get a load of Duke's schedule? Connor O'Neill on Twitter at Connor O'Neill underscore Di for Deacon's Illustrated and Devil's Illustrated, I guess. Appreciate your time, man. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks, I appreciate it. You got it.