It took Riley Skinner all of 20 minutes to learn that teammate John Russell's motor runs only at full throttle.
Skinner, the Deacons' senior quarterback, was a junior at The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Fla., when Russell transferred there from Irwin County, Ga., to play defensive tackle.
"We didn't know what to expect," Skinner said. "He comes in and he's pretty strong in the weight room. But he's a little intense.
"He's a real intense guy."
In the first practice of the season, Russell put on a show. Then the curtain fell, and Russell fell with it.
"So we get out to our first morning practice, and we're going through our warm-ups," Skinner recalled. "And I'd never seen somebody do more intense warm-ups than John Russell -- in terms of high knees, shuffling, back-pedaling. It was the most intense thing I've ever seen. It caught everybody's eye. (We said), ‘This kid's going to be a force.'
"So we get through warm-ups and we go to our individual drills. And the next thing I know, five minutes later I hear somebody yelling for a trainer. And J.R. is getting carted off the field, and he has to sit under the misting shower for the next 20 minutes.
"The whole time we thought we had the wrong impression. He passed out in 15 minutes, strictly from warm-ups. He wanted to make a good impression on the coaches, and it backfired on us."
Seven years and 39 games of playing defensive tackle at Wake Forest later, Russell's motor is still running wide open. Without that kind of intensity and energy, Russell never could have started as a 252-pound freshman against Louisville in the 2006 Orange Bowl. And without it, he wouldn't be a preseason candidate for All-ACC honors as a senior.
"It's just his high intensity, even off the field," center Russ Nenon said. "We're out on Monday morning, and J.R. has a smile on his face. We're in the weight room at 7:30 in the morning, and he's rocking and rolling all the time.
"It's crazy to see somebody with a motor like that, but it pays off. And I'm thankful he's on our team."
In his fifth season at Wake Forest, Russell is actually beginning to look the part of a defensive tackle off the field as well as on. He's listed at 280 pounds, and although he says he weighs about 273, that's up considerably from his first days at Wake Forest, when he tipped the scales at 240 pounds.
"We like to put our defensive linemen in a little undersized, to use a little quickness on them," Russell said. "But some of the guys say, ‘I'm so light, I'm so light.' Well I say, ‘I started against No. (5) Louisville in the Orange Bowl at 250 playing defensive tackle. I say, ‘If I can do it, you can.' It's been a journey. You can't just eat everything in sight. You've got to eat good food, but you've got to eat a lot of it. It's like eating salad. You've just got to eat five of them."
The Deacons actually looked at Russell at defensive end during his freshman year of 2005, when he redshirtted. He reminded the staff of Matt Robinson, another player of similar size who excelled at defensive end with quickness, technique and desire instead of raw power.
But the end position at Wake Forest required the kind of discipline that Russell didn't have, at least not that early in his career. So he was thrown into the fray at defensive tackle to play 13 games for the ACC champions. The start in the Orange Bowl was the first of his career.
"There are times when we are more assignment conscious (at defensive end), and we really slow those guys down," Coach Jim Grobe said. "We want them to contain the quarterback and have certain option responsibilities and things like that.
"Whereas at defensive tackle, we just kind of get you in your gap and let you go play. He's a pretty aggressive guy, and he just kind of likes to turn it loose. It just suited him better.
"He wasn't big enough to do it, but we didn't tell him that. We just kind of let him go play."
■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.
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