ACC football record book: Wake Forest’s Tanner Price is this category’s all-time best
Editor’s note: This is part of a 10-story series focusing on ACC football records. See the bottom of this story for a list of all the other content in the series.
WAKE FOREST — When Tanner Price eats, he uses his right hand. When he brushes his teeth, he uses his right hand. When he throws a Frisbee or writes a letter or plays a tennis match, he uses his right hand.
“But I can’t throw right-handed,” Price said with a laugh.
No matter. In four seasons at Wake Forest, his left arm served him just fine.
Price, 29, holds one of the ACC’s most unique records: career passing yardage by a left-handed quarterback. His 8,899 yards rank comfortably ahead of Maryland’s Boomer Esiason (6,184) and lesser knowns such as Virginia’s Jameel Sewell, Clemson’s Mike Eppley and fellow Wake Forester Phil Barnhill.
The only issue: from a historical standpoint, his productivity came at a bad time.
In the years before Price’s arrival, the Demon Deacons were an AP Top 25 mainstay under Jim Grobe, won the 2006 ACC Championship Game and appeared in three straight bowls. In the years since he left, Dave Clawson’s teams have set a slew of offensive records and put together four consecutive winning seasons alongside three bowl-game wins.
Sandwiched between are Price’s four years as starting quarterback where, in comparison, Wake Forest went a combined 18-31 and didn’t finish a season above .500. A rollercoaster, as he put it.
“But at the same time, I got to play a lot of football and made a lot of great memories,” said Price, who’s also second on Wake Forest’s career passing yardage list. “So I’m not complaining about it.”
His journey to the top of the ACC’s lefty quarterback totem pole began in Austin. He grew up a fan of Steve Young and Michael Vick, two of football’s most famous left-handed quarterbacks, plus Chris Simms, who had a productive career at the nearby University of Texas.
Although some lefty signal-callers have it harder than their counterparts — one high school coach told the Washington Post he’d seen colleges decline to recruit quarterbacks because of their handedness — Price said he had no such issues. He moonlighted at middle linebacker and running back for his Pop Warner team before settling in on quarterback in eighth grade.
It helped, Price admitted, that he had an excellent mentor at his disposal. Steve, his father, played quarterback at Division II Southwest Oklahoma State and briefly backed up John Elway and Gary Kubiak on the Denver Broncos in the 1980s.
“He taught me the mechanics,” Price said of his dad, who’s right-handed. “I never was discouraged.”
Ted Stachitas, a redshirt sophomore, opened the 2010 season as Wake Forest’s starter. But when he went down in the second game of the season, against Duke, Price was ready. Two years of Texas high school football — “essentially run like college programs,” he said — prepared him for this moment.
Price entered in the second quarter and promptly completed 12 of 19 passes for 190 yards and three touchdowns in a 54-48 win.
“Earned the starting job there,” Price said, “and proceeded to go on a nine-game losing streak.”
His sophomore year, though, will always be special. Price set career highs across the board — 3,017 passing yards, 20 touchdowns, a 60-percent completion rate — as Wake Forest got out to a 4-1 start.
“We should have been ACC champions that year,” James said. “We had Clemson on the ropes. There were a bunch of games we left out there.”
Today, Price still considers himself lucky for holding onto Wake Forest’s starting job his entire career. As a left-handed quarterback, it turned some potential disadvantages for him, his skill players and his offensive line into subtle advantages.
Take a go route, or fade route, as an example. That throw ideally hits a receiver on his outside shoulder, down the sideline and away from his defender. When he threw those routes down the right sideline, Price had to throw across his body, and his balls sometimes didn’t make it to exactly that spot.
“That’s something you have to be on the same page with, with the receivers,” Price said. “If I’m throwing a go route on my right side, know I might pull you in a little bit more.”
That’s a quirk plenty of receiving corps and right-handed passers never have to adapt to. But since Price was a four-year starter and even organized throwing sessions outside of practice to nail it down, “it didn’t even become something you thought about” for Wake Forest’s offense, James said.
Skill-position players such as Michael Campanaro and Chris Givens (both future NFL receivers) grew accustomed to their quarterback’s strengths. Wake Forest’s right tackles weren’t surprised when they got more pass-blocking duties as Price’s blind-side protectors. And “flipped” play-actions, where Price faked a handoff to his right and rolled to his left, became a staple of Wake Forest’s offensive playbook.
“Definitely, some receivers complained about the spin of the ball being weird,” Price said. “To them, I just said, ‘Catch the ball!’”
As for the cornerbacks who had to defend those passes?
“They were probably thrown off by the spin as well,” he said with a laugh, “because there were a couple dropped interceptions throughout my career.”
In the back half of Price’s Wake Forest stint, there were still highlights.
He pointed to a big home win against North Carolina his junior season, when he ran in a game-winning touchdown with 2:09 left. And the fact Wake Forest’s 2012 team was just one win short of bowl eligibility. (The 2013 team went 4-8.)
But that era was more defined as a turning of the tides, as James put it. Grobe resigned after the 2013 season, ending a 13-year run with the program, and Clawson was hired as his replacement. Tom Elrod, who’d been the Wake Forest quarterbacks coach when Price played, was implicated in the infamous Wakey Leaks scandal three years later.
“Tanner was having to navigate a lot of those waters and continue to will us to those wins,” James said.
Price, speaking from his home in Austin, where he works in financial advising, called his Wake Forest career “a great experience.” Despite the team’s struggles, logging 46 starts wasn’t too shabby for a football lover like himself.
Neither was the ACC record he’s held for seven years. And when the conference’s next productive southpaw ultimately comes along, expect him to be a fan.
“I’ll always root for the left-handed quarterback,” Price said.
TANNER PRICE IN THE ACC FOOTBALL RECORD BOOK
- First in career passing yards by a left-handed quarterback: 8,899 (2010-13)
- Third in career pass attempts: 1,451
- Sixth in career offensive plays: 1,804
- Seventh in career pass completions: 824
THE SCHEDULE FOR THIS SERIES
(Dates the stories will be posted online)
MAY 26 — Wake Forest quarterback Rusty LaRue holds records for single-game pass attempts (78), single-game pass completions (55), total offensive plays in a game (82) and a few others from a crazy 1995 stretch where he threw for 478 yards against Duke, 501 against Georgia Tech and 545 against N.C. State.
MAY 27 — N.C. State wide receiver Torry Holt has the record for most receiving touchdowns in a game with five against Florida State, which was ranked No. 3 in the country.
MAY 28 — Don McCauley, a UNC running back from 1968-70, has the ACC record for most rushing attempts in a season with 360 in 1970. He also owns the ACC record for the most plays from scrimmage in a single season with 375 that same year. The most interesting stat associated with McCauley is that he broke the ACC record for most rushing yards in a season with 1,863 yards in 1970, a record that stood for 43 years.
MAY 29 — Duke receivers Conner Vernon and Jamison Crowder are tied for the ACC career receptions record with 283 apiece. They were teammates for a time in the early 2010s.
MAY 31 — North Carolina’s Kendric Burney has the record for most interception return yardage in a game — 170 against Miami in 2009.
JUNE 1 — N.C. State’s Ted Brown still holds the ACC career rushing record, a mark he set from 1975-78.
JUNE 2 — Wake Forest’s Tanner Price has the ACC passing record by a left-handed quarterback.
JUNE 3 — A quick roundup of other interesting and important ACC footbal records leads with the 2011 Clemson team, which became the first in ACC history to win three straight games against ranked opponents. That team had a bevy of kids from the state of North Carolina.
This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM.