Wake Forest Football: No clear favorite in the battle at quarterback

With the first game two weeks away, the Wake Forest football team doesn’t have a clear front runner for the starting quarterback job.

The Wake Forest Demon Deacons’ are less than two weeks away from the first game of the 2018 season, when they travel to face Tulane. However, the biggest question this summer has yet to be answered: will Jamie Newman or Sam Hartman start at quarterback?

Head coach Dave Clawson knew he would be looking for a new quarterback this season with the departure of John Wolford, who was a four-year starter for this team. The expectations were that Kendall Hinton would take over at the position, however he was suspended for the first three games for violating team rules.

This has left Clawson to pick between Newman, who has thrown only four pass attempts at the collegiate level, and Hartman, who is a true freshman.

In the team’s second intra-squad scrimmage on Saturday, Newman was 10 of 14 for 131 passing yards and two touchdowns. Meanwhile Hartman went 14 of 25 for 94 yards, adding 21 yards on the ground, according to Conor O’Neill of the Winston-Salem Journal.

Certainly it would seem that Newman had the better day according to the stats but Clawson praised both quarterback’s play on Saturday.

"“I’ll go back and watch the film,” Clawson said. “Certainly Sam had a great opening drive, the first drive the first offense goes right down, scores points. But then Jamie had a drive, he went in there and hit Steven Claude for a touchdown. So they both did good things.”"

This is a switch from the first scrimmage as Hartman had the better numbers throwing the ball than Newman.

The Demon Deacons have one of the deepest wide receiver groups in the ACC with players like Greg Dortch and Scotty Washington at the position. However, the talent won’t matter if the there isn’t a quarterback that can lead this offense.

At this point, with both quarterbacks out-performing the other in the two scrimmages it would seemingly have to be even. The experience in this offense may be the deciding factor with Newman having a slight edge in this area.

Unfortunately for fans of Wake Forest football, they may not find out until August 30th when the Demon Deacons take the field.