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When redshirt freshman Nikita Whitlock, all 5-11 and 238 pounds of him, lines up at nose guard for Wake Forest, the reaction he gets from opposing linemen may vary from game to game.
But the gist is usually the same. It's along the lines of, "Is that all there is?"
"I had an offensive lineman say to me, 'You're 4-2 - what are you going to do?'" Whitlock said of last Saturday's game against Georgia Tech.
Coach Jim Grobe, a 5-11 nose guard himself during his playing days at Virginia, couldn't help but chuckle when told of the quip.
"Did they mean 40-yard dash or height?' Grobe asked. "Because it looks like he's 4.2 (seconds) on the film sometimes."
By the end of the their 24-20 victory at BB&T Field, the Yellow Jackets knew that Whitlock belonged where the Wake Forest coaching staff put him last spring - in a move made partly out of need, partly out of curiosity. Whitlock, in his fifth college game, made 10 tackles, dropped two ball carriers behind the line of scrimmage and assisted on another tackle for a loss.
"(The lineman) came and saw me after the game," Whitlock said. "He said 'Good game, you did real well.'"
Flourishing in the newly-installed 3-4 scheme that had him lined up over center, Whitlock was a big reason the Deacons were able to hold Georgia Tech to 209 yards rushing. The Yellow Jackets were averaging 320.5 rushing yards a game, best in the ACC and fourth best in the nation.
"We never got anything consistent out of the running game," said Coach Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech. "If we single-blocked the nose tackle, he made every play, and if we doubled him, the linebacker made it."
Whitlock was so good at nose guard at Wylie High School that he was named the AP's Defensive Player of the Year in the largest classification (5A) in Texas. But even that didn't win him many opportunities to play college football.
Wake Forest's major- college competition for Whitlock were SMU and Tulsa. All the other football programs in Texas passed.
"The rest of them, they contacted me a few times but, due to my size, they wouldn't take a chance on me," Whitlock said.
SMU was the only school to recruit Whitlock as a nose guard.
"We saw him totally as a linebacker in college," Grobe said. "We never thought about, with his height, letting him play in the front."
But the graduation of John Russell, Boo Robinson and Michael Lockett left the Deacons short of defensive linemen in spring practice, and Grobe hadn't forgotten all the commotion Whitlock wreaked at nose guard in high school.
"So we just bit the bullet and did it in the spring, and then we just kept doing it in the fall," Grobe said. "But you're talking about a guy that's the state player of the year as a nose guard.
"He was the real deal. Nobody knew what to do with him. I mean nobody did. "
Whitlock uses the same attributes in college that he dominated with in high school. Though he doesn't run the 40-yard dash in 4.2 seconds, Grobe wasn't that far off the mark.
"Last spring at 230 (pounds) I was running a low 4.6, maybe a high 4.5 with the wind behind me," Whitlock said.
And his lack of stature, believe it or not, can actually be an advantage in the trenches, where linemen endeavor to get their shoulder pads lower than those of their opponent. The lower the pads, the greater the leverage.
"I'm shorter than everybody, so it's not hard to get under their pads," Whitlock said. "And once you there, I just try to use my leverage. Once you've got that good position and get some leverage going, you get them backing up, you get them going forward.
"You're just pushing and pulling, and that's all she wrote."
dcollins@wsjournal.com 727-7323
The following fields overflowed: SOURCE = By Dan Collins
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