ROLE-PLAYING: Wake Forest's scout-team players are trying their best to operate Navy's unusual option offense this week

If Turner Faulk had a football scholarship at Wake Forest, he would certainly earn it this week.

Faulk is a walk-on freshman from Winston-Salem's Carver High School who, along with redshirt freshman Skylar Jones, has been asked to impersonate the Navy quarterback in preparation for Saturday's home game against the Midshipmen.

The task of playing option quarterback for the Deacons' scout team promises to be as hard as pronouncing the Navy quarterback's name.

It's Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada.

Coach Jim Grobe said that Faulk got the assignment because of his speed. It certainly wasn't his size.

Faulk is listed at 5-8, 160 and his status on the team is confirmed by his jersey. He wears No. 32.

"He's really quick as a hiccup," Grobe said. "He's in there running some option stuff for us, too. He and Sky together will probably give us a look.

"You just get the quickest kids you can and put them over there and tell them, ‘Run as fast as you can go.' And hopefully we'll be about half as fast as Navy's team."

Navy is one of the few teams in college football that builds its entire offense around the option, which requires that the quarterback read the defense during the play to decide whether to hand off to the fullback, pitch to the trailing back or keep the ball himself.

Grobe knows the offense well. He spent 11 seasons as an assistant at Air Force, which also runs the option, and installed the offense in his first job as head coach at Ohio -- where five of his assistants were also on staff.

But neither Air Force nor Ohio, according to Grobe, ever ran the option any better than Navy, which improved to 2-2 with last Saturday's 23-21 home victory against Rutgers.

Wake Forest, ranked No. 15, improved to 3-0 with a 12-3 victory at Florida State.

"What we know is not a problem," Grobe said. "The players have to know it, because we can't go out and play for them. All the knowledge in the world that we have doesn't do you bit of good when the ball is kicked off on Saturday.

"One of the biggest problems is they do it as well or better than anybody's ever done it. You have a week to prepare for it and you don't see it any other time."

Hence the importance this week of the practice performance of Faulk, Jones and others -- mostly first-year freshmen -- on the Deacons' scout team. Grobe said he doubts that the first-team defense will get much work this week against either the first-team or second-team offense.

"We'll spend as much time coaching the scout team this week as we will coaching our own defense, trying to just resemble Navy's offense," Grobe said. "And we won't do a good job of it, but we want to get as close as we can.

"If we can get about half as fast, just with the execution up and down the line of scrimmage, it will give our guys some kind of a feel for what it might be like on Saturday. Then we'll be ahead of the game."

Paul Johnson, who left Navy to coach at Georgia Tech, has been replaced by Ken Niumatalolo, an assistant for the Midshipmen the past six years. But a number of key players are back from the team that led Wake Forest in the second quarter last season before the Deacons pulled away to a 44-24 victory.

The momentum changed with the game tied at 17 when linebacker Aaron Curry knocked Kaheaku-Enhada from the game. The Midshipmen managed to score on just one of five second-half possessions.

Kaheaku-Enhada missed the first two games of this season with a strained hamstring, and was sidelined by heat exhaustion in Navy's 41-31 loss at Duke. He played his first full game last week against Rutgers, replacing senior co-captain Jarod Bryant.

"I don't think there's any question he's their guy," Grobe said of Kaheaku-Enhada. "You know what they think about the Bryant kid though. He's their co-captain. That tells you what a great kid he is as a backup quarterback.

"Now I don't now what they're going to do. With Kaipo back, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw Bryant play some slotback for them."

John Russell, a junior defensive tackle who has started all three games, is listed as questionable because of a sprained shoulder. Russell said yesterday that he intends to play Saturday.

Tristan Dorty, a redshirt freshman linebacker who had a tackle for a loss at Florida State, is listed as probable despite a mild ankle sprain.

Both Russell and Dorty were dressed in full pads at yesterday's practice.

■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.