My assessment on what the loss of Travis Smith means to Wake's quarterback situation moving forward.
News broke yesterday that freshman quarterback Travis Smith will be transferring from Wake Forest. While it wasn't necessarily a shock that he decided to transfer, the timing was somewhat surprising. Nine days ago, we discovered that third-string quarterback Kevin Sousa was suspended because he received a DWI after driving his SUV onto the upper quad of Wake Forest's campus to get Subway at 3:30 a.m. There is no drive-thru. Needless to say, it has been an eventful two weeks for Wake Forest's backup quarterbacks. Where does this leave us?
True freshman starting quarterback John Wolford is currently healthy, and could potentially be Wake's starting quarterback for the next four years. I believe Wolford is one of the best assets this program currently has, so we are in excellent shape with one quarterback. The problem, however, is that I anticipate backup quarterback Tyler Cameron will transfer after this season. Cameron enrolled early at Wake Forest, redshirted behind Tanner Price during Price's junior season, and then played sparingly during Price's senior season. Cameron competed this spring against Kevin Sousa for the starting quarterback position, but ultimately, neither of them separated themselves and Wolford won the job in fall camp. Due to Sousa's aforementioned suspension, my guess is that he will not be a member of the Wake Forest football program for much longer. So if Wolford and Cameron both go down this year, we will be giving the ball to walk-on Pat Long. No offense to Pat, but that's clearly not a position we want to be in come ACC season.
The culmination of all of this is that John Wolford will probably be the team's only scholarship practice during spring practices. Wolford will clearly get plenty of reps, but it will hurt the amount of quality reps that receivers can get during several drills. By next fall's camp, consensus 3-star recruit Kendall Hinton will be also on campus (assuming he honors his commitment on National Signing Day). Assuming we do not recruit another quarterback for the 2015 class, then it's my best guess that we will only have two scholarship quarterbacks on the 2015 team. I could see Kendall Hinton winning the starting job next year, which would alleviate the problem of worrying about burning his redshirt in a backup role. But if Hinton is the backup, then Wolford goes down for an extended period of time, that could be a serious problem.Top level quarterback play won't be a problem next year, the ramifications of little to no depth could be. Let's hope for no injuries.
