Big Four ACC teams will have experienced hands at the helm this season

The four men who coach ACC football teams in North Carolina all consider themselves lucky in at least one significant regard.

All four -- Jim Grobe of Wake Forest, Tom O'Brien of N.C. State, Butch Davis of North Carolina and David Cutcliffe of Duke -- will start the season with proven quarterbacks, which, next to an ironclad multi-year contract, provides about as much security as their generally insecure profession has to offer.

"I think that's the most valuable piece of any college-football team, the quarterback," O'Brien said.

If the Big Four is to at long last live up to its name in football, it will be on, if not the backs, then at least the arms of veteran quarterbacks who have already distinguished themselves. A pretty solid case can be made that N.C. State's Russell Wilson, Wake Forest's Riley Skinner, Duke's Thaddeus Lewis and North Carolina's T.J. Yates are the four best quarterbacks in the conference.

Exhibit A would be last season's ACC passing-efficiency ratings. Wilson led the conference at 133.9, Skinner was third (behind senior Cullen Harper of Clemson) at 126.2, and Lewis was fourth at 123.0.

Yates, who missed six games with a broken ankle, didn't throw enough passes to qualify. But he was leading the conference at the time of his injury and finished with the off-the-charts mark of 153.0.

Wilson made one of the biggest splashes in conference history last fall when he led the conference in total yards and became the first freshman to be named the first-team All-ACC quarterback. He threw 275 passes, only one of which was intercepted.

Skinner owns the best career-completion percentage (67.3) in ACC history and has a 26-11 record as a starting quarterback. He threw 363 passes last season, with only seven interceptions.

Lewis has improved dramatically over his first three seasons, with his completion percentage climbing and his number of interceptions falling with each campaign. As a junior, he completed 224 of 361 passes with just six interceptions.

Yates, prone to interceptions as a freshman when he threw 18 on 365 passes, cut the total to four last season on 135 passes. He's the least proven of the four Big Four quarterbacks, but his return from injury is a key reason that the Tar Heels have been given a shot at contending with Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech for the Coastal Division title.

More than numbers

Statistics only begin to tell the story, though, of what a veteran, proven quarterback can mean to a team. If nothing else, it allows a coaching staff to proceed much faster while installing and adjusting the offense.

"I think that's usually your top concern coming back, whether your quarterback has experience and whether he has good experience," Grobe said. "So if you've got that one, it makes all the other decisions so much easier.

"In our case, we've got so many other positions to worry about, it's nice when you don't have to spend too much time worrying about who the quarterback's going to be."

Confidence, as has often been said, is contagious, but so is apprehension. Anyone who has ever played college football can describe the feeling, good or bad, that permeates a huddle. With a word or a look, as much as a bullet, 45-yard pass, a quarterback can get the right, or wrong, message across.

And for N.C. State last season, the emergence of Wilson was the spark that fueled the Wolfpack's late-season charge to the program's first bowl appearance since 2005.

"I feel like it's a privilege and an honor to play with an established quarterback like Russell Wilson, a guy who makes the plays that he does," running back Jamelle Eugene said. "It's not something that every team is afforded and has the luxury of having.

"We haven't had that type of quarterback in a while. Coming into the season, it instills a lot of confidence in not only yourself and the team, just knowing you've got a guy you can really count on and all you have to do is go out there and do your job."

Communication counts

Another benefit of a veteran quarterback is the quality of information he can absorb and relay back to his sideline. It only stands to reason that the more games that a quarterback plays, the more he learns about the game and the better he is able to adjust to the speed of the game.

Skinner, who was thrown into the fray as redshirt freshman when incumbent starter Benjamin Mauk suffered a broken arm, said that the game has slowed down considerably over his 38 college games.

"I'm definitely a lot calmer than I was my freshman year," Skinner said. "I tried to hide it a little at the beginning of the season.

"But to me I felt like after I got four or five games under the belt, you just start kind of get used to the flow of the game and things slowed down a little bit. Since then they've just slowed down more and more.

"But it's still a fast game. I don't have everything figured out at all."

Things happen on a football field that can't be detected by assistants peering through binoculars from the press box, much less by a coach standing on the sideline. The more that a quarterback knows and can pick up, the better he can keep his coaches and teammates informed.

Lewis has played 35 college games. Thankfully, Cutcliffe said, it shows.

"I think that's the critical part of it," Cutcliffe said. "Part of my test for quarterbacks is basically, ‘Tell me what you don't like and tell me what you do like. Tell me what you're really confident in.'

"Not only is he talking and communicating with us, he's able to coach and teach our young players.

"One of the things that's so critical in football is communication."

Assessing options

Most football programs have a playbook the size of a metropolitan phone book, but there are only so many plays that a team can learn. The more experienced the quarterback, the more plays his team can run.

Also, most pass plays have several potential receivers. The better a quarterback learns the game, the better he usually gets at making his reads and finding someone open.

Skinner said he plans to spread his passes around to more receivers this season, something that requires experience and knowledge as well as ability. Davis said that his quarterback, Yates, has made strides in that capacity since last season.

"One of the steps you want is to have a great command of the offense, of where everybody is, and you can get to the second and third read in some progressions," Davis said. "You already know one is gone. ‘This coverage is gone, and I'm not even going to go there.'

"I'm starting to see some of that."

What Grobe has seen in Skinner is a bright, talented and charismatic player who has probably had as big of an impact on the program as anyone who has ever played at Wake Forest. A quarterback as good and as grizzled at Skinner can spoil a coach, but Grobe will have to get over that next season, when he breaks in a new starter.

In the meantime, he and offensive coordinator Steed Lobotzke and quarterbacks coach Tom Elrod will continue to appreciate what they have -- at least most of the time.

"He's been there so long, the guy makes very few mistakes," Grobe said. "Whenever he makes a mistake, I wonder if we didn't screw it up. That's kind of the way you get.

"You're always hesitant to say ‘Riley screwed something up,' because you wonder if it wasn't Elrod or Lobo."

■ Journal reporter Bill Cole contributed to this report.