Jaquarii Roberson, Taylor Morin shine for Wake Forest. Can Campbell slow them down?

Wake Forest’s slot receivers start each practice with a succinct message that’s enough to get them going.

“Every day we go into practice and we always say, ‘The Z (receiver) is going to have a day. The slots are going to have a day,’” Jaquarii Roberson said.

In that vein, the Z’s have had two games.

Roberson and Taylor Morin are Wake Forest’s leading receivers through two games, with wide gaps between them and the rest of the receiving corps despite them both playing slot receiver — and hence, never being on the field at the same time.

Morin has a team-best 12 catches for 145 yards, while Roberson has 11 catches for a team-best 167 yards. Together, they’ve accounted for 54.8 percent of the team’s catches (23 of 42) and 59 percent of the receiving yards (312 of 529).

“That position is a little bit unique in our offense,” coach Dave Clawson said. “A lot of times those are guys that, because they’re not 6-4, 210 pounds, other people don’t recruit them, but they have a skillset that fits what we do and they’re really productive.”

Wake Forest (0-2) hosts Campbell (0-3) in a rare Friday night game this week (7 p.m., ACC Network).

The surprise here certainly isn’t that Wake Forest’s slot receiver — receivers, in this case — is producing. Greg Dortch and Tabari Hines combined for 106 catches, 1,405 yards and 16 touchdowns in 2017. Dortch followed that up in 2018 with the second-most catches (89) and yards (1,089) in school history.

And last season, Kendall Hinton’s first full season as a receiver saw him record the seventh 1,000-yard receiving season in school history.

The surprise is how two relative unknowns have already emerged as the top threats in Wake Forest’s offense.

Or maybe it shouldn’t be that surprising.

“Jaquarii obviously, this is his fourth year. He’s been behind Kendall and behind Greg, a little bit of Tabari,” receivers coach Kevin Higgins said. “So he’s had an opportunity to watch guys before him play the position, learn the ins and outs and obviously he’s continued to mature as an individual as well.

“The one thing that I’m really excited about with Taylor is he has improved from Year One to Year Two, his change-of-direction, his ability to sink his hips and also his, and this is really just his own abilities, to read defenses and know where and when to sit down. … His ability to read a defense and know when to sit, when to go, when to move, is really uncanny.”

Coming into the season, Morin had taken four snaps in his career — all on special teams, all against Clemson as a freshman last year. Roberson, a redshirt junior, played in 18 games the past two seasons and had 13 catches for 154 yards operating as the backup to Dortch, and then to Hinton.

The lasting impacts of Dortch and Hinton can be seen in the effectiveness of Morin and Roberson, though.

“One thing I kept from Greg, he always told me, ‘You’re never tired,’” Roberson said. “He’d always say, when we’re running sprints or we’re practice and we’ve got a go route, and another go route, he always used to say, ‘Just tell yourself you’re not tired.’ That really helped.

“Kendall was different, he came from quarterback. So he also brought the leadership role into the room and I guess I take some of his leadership skills and helped me develop.”

Morin only had last season with Hinton as far as in-person experience, and that served valuable — as does film of Dortch from past seasons.

“When (Hinton) was here, I’d always try to pick his brain and get to know what he was seeing, how he was seeing it,” Morin said. “When I was getting recruited here, Greg was someone that I had talked to a good bit and him as well, Greg and Kendall both, those are two really good guys that I’ve gotten to study in the film room.

“What they’ve done for this program is unmatched.”

The truncated offseason presented a challenge to every program in the country, especially a Wake Forest one that is predicated on development. Players spent about four months that would’ve been spring practices and summer weight-lifting and conditioning trying to make due with resources at home.

Morin and Roberson represent two of the avenues players could have taken to make the most of the disrupted offseason.

Morin lives in the same area of Virginia as freshman quarterback Mitch Griffis, and the pair was able to meet up roughly three times a week.

“It definitely helped, having someone that knows our system allowed us to do a lot of things to stay sharp over the break when not everyone had the opportunity to do that,” Morin said, “so I felt like that gave us an edge coming back.”

Like their sizes — Morin is listed at 5-10, 174 on the roster, Roberson at 6-1, 184 — there’s a difference here.

“Jaquarii was a little bit different in that offseason period in that he was all over the place,” Higgins said. “His family had traveled up to Boston, where a lot of his other family was, and he was kind of moving around a lot.

“But Jaquarii did a great job as well, getting to the gyms, running on the streets, doing those kinds of things.”

There’s one more note about Wake Forest’s slot receivers this season: Morin and Roberson might not be the only ones who contribute this season.

Freshman Ke’Shawn Williams has been impressive in his short time on campus, and made his first appearance on the depth chart this week.

“Ke’Shawn has shown as much promise as any freshman coming in, just his overall understanding of the game, his ability to learn, his ability to process,” Higgins said. “And then his work ethic has been outstanding, not to mention his hands and change-of-direction are very good as well.

“He was a real surprise.”

What’s unsurprising is that the Z’s are going to have some more big days.

This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 8:39 AM.