COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK SEVEN:
Wake Forest, UNC, Campbell, Johnson C Smith
Among DG’s ACC/NC “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs”
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Oct. 13, 2026)
While the focus of our weekly college football shows are forward-looking as often as possible, we always take a glance back at the previous week, too, and sometimes we’ll offer some quick mentions to those making impactful headlines on the gridiron, especially in the Atlantic Coast Conference and/or across North Carolina.
With that in mind, below are our Week Seven “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” brought to you by our good friends at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach and the same folks’ latest creation, Jimmy’s Inland, their new bar in Wilmington.
Jimmy’s has a full bar, nightly drink specials and live music 365 days a year(!). (It’s a great place to watch a game, too.) Right next door in Wrightsville Beach, King Neptune has become one of the best restaurants in the greater Wilmington area. Jimmy’s Inland, which features live music, pool tables, darts, an arcade and the brand’s signature slushies, is located about a mile from the UNC Wilmington campus.
Week Seven “Fun Fact #1”
Fun Fact: Entering Week Seven, 5-1 Wake Forest is one of only five college football teams with at least four victories over Power Four opponents, and that puts the Demon Deacons in a very nice neighborhood, alongside only #1 Georgia, #2 Notre Dame, #6 Alabama and #12 UCLA.
Second-year Wake coach Jake Dickert, coming off an extremely impressive 9-4 debut in Winston-Salem, again has the Deacons playing some of the best football in the ACC. The only league team playing better right now is 5-0 and #3-ranked Miami, and the Hurricanes out-gained Wake just 378-334 in their 33-20 head-to-head victory over the Deacs last month in Winston-Salem.
In its other five contests this season, Wake has posted dominant victories over Akron (38-16), Stanford (57-3) and NC State (38-14), plus close wins at Purdue (38-36 in double OT) and at Louisville (30-27). The Demon Deacons’ triumph in the Derby City came when the Cardinals were ranked #16 nationally. While Stanford is struggling this season, Wake’s other three Power Four victims — Purdue, Louisville and NC State — all look like probable bowl teams at the midpoint of their regular seasons.
During a season in which a bunch of ACC teams look good only on offense (e.g., Florida State, Louisville) or only on defense (e.g., Clemson, Pitt, UNC), Wake Forest looks pretty solid on both sides of the ball. The Demon Deacons rank fourth in the league in scoring, at about 37 points per game, and they rank seventh in the league in scoring defense, at around 21 points per game.
Wake has only one easy regular-season game remaining, against FCS opponent Merrimack, but if the Deacons can go even 3-2 against their remaining ACC foes (at Cal, Virginia, at SMU, at Georgia Tech, Duke), they will improve on last year’s 8-4 regular-season record.
If the Deacs somehow can finish 11-1 or even 10-2, of course, much bigger things will be possible.
Now on to this week’s shout-outs, brought to you by our friends at Muscle Milk, as we head into Week Seven …
#1—Shout-out to North Carolina linebacker Derek McDonald.
A sixth-year senior who transferred to UNC from Syracuse in January, McDonald quickly has turned himself into a National Football League prospect, one of the Tar Heels’ best players, and an obvious favorite of legendary coach Bill Belichick.
While the typically tight-lipped Belichick hasn’t yet said much publicly about McDonald, he repeatedly has praised the veteran linebacker in private conversations, including to the various broadcast teams calling the Tar Heels’ games each week. Belichick, an eight-time Super Bowl champion (counting two as an assistant) who spent nearly a half-century in the NFL, reportedly has said multiple times that McDonald is good enough to play in the NFL “right now.”
During the Tar Heels’ 3-2 start this season, their defense definitely led the way, with their 19 points per game yield ranking fourth in the 17-team ACC. With returning All-ACC end Melkart Abou Jaoude limited by a hand/wrist injury, McDonald has stepped up as the unit’s top player, calling the signals for de-facto coordinator Brian Belichick (Bill’s son and the team’s secondary coach) and making tackles literally from sideline to sideline from his middle linebacker position.
Entering Week Seven, the 24-year-old McDonald led the ACC and ranked eighth nationally in total tackles, with about 10 per game. He has made big plays for UNC against the run, when dropping into pass coverage, and as a member of the Tar Heels’ special teams.
In UNC’s 21-17 victory at #25 Pitt last Saturday, McDonald made one of the biggest plays of the game. Late in the fourth quarter, on a crucial fourth-and-two play near Carolina’s defensive 30-yard line, he punched the ball out of a Pitt running back’s hands after a one-yard gain. Although the runner was ruled down, negating the fumble, the play resulted in a turnover on downs, and the Panthers never threatened again.
A three-star prospect from Atlanta at the Marist School, a college-prep institution known for both high-level athletics and academics, McDonald spent the first five years of his college career at Syracuse. He missed most of last season with the Orange because of injuries, but before that he had started for two seasons under coach Dino Babers and for one season under coach Fran Brown, while also earning a reputation as a gym rat and an obsessive student of game film.
That background ultimately made him a perfect fit for Belichick, who now has an NFL-caliber talent right in the middle of his much-improved UNC defense.
#2—Shout-out to Wake Forest wide receiver Carlos Hernandez.
At the Power Four level, it’s extremely unusual for a player to make it all the way to his senior year before becoming a full-time starter, then for that player to use his fourth college campaign for not only a break-out season, but to actually become a legitimate All-America candidate along the way.
Halfway through Hernandez’s senior year at Wake Forest, there is only one Power Four wide receiver with significantly more receiving yards. That player is Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith, who might just win the Heisman Trophy on his way to becoming a very high first-round NFL draft pick.
Hernandez (pictured above), meanwhile, has been a huge part of the Demon Deacons’ 5-1 start and #21 national ranking, as both a wideout and a dangerous punt returner. Entering Week Seven, he ranks second in the FBS with eight receptions per game and fifth with 120 receiving yards per game.
As a three-star high school prospect from the Los Angeles area, Hernandez began his college career at Washington State, where coach Jake Dickert had taken the Cougars to back-to-back bowl games in 2021 and 2022. Hernandez was a backup at Wazzu as a true freshman, then a part-time starter as a sophomore. After following Dickert to Wake, Hernandez served as a backup wideout last season, behind All-ACC playmaker Chris Barnes, among others.
When Barnes left for Oklahoma State in the transfer portal, Hernandez finally got his opportunity as a full-time starter at the college level, and he’s clearly making the most of it. In Wake Forest’s huge win over #16 Louisville earlier this season, Hernandez posted 194 receiving yards, the most by any ACC player against a ranked opponent in more than a decade.
As the Demon Deacons head to the West Coast for a Saturday night matchup at Cal, Hernandez’s 49 receptions and 720 receiving yards already rank as his career highs in both categories, even with six regular-season games and the postseason still ahead.
#3—Shout-out, at the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level, to third-year Campbell head coach Braxton Harris.
Harris has his team off to a 5-1 start — the only loss was to the Florida Gators in Gainesville — and the high-scoring Camels are heavy favorites to improve to 6-1 this week, as they host 0-7 Towson at Barker-Lane Stadium on Saturday afternoon during homecoming weekend in Buies Creek.
As Campbell continues to enjoy the first Top 25 football ranking in school history, it’s worth noting that a 6-1 start would be the best ever at a university that didn’t launch its FCS-level program until 2008, and it would put Harris and his team in great position to finish with the best record in program history.
Previously, Campbell’s best seasons have ended with just 6-5 records — once under coach Dale Steele, then three times under coach Mike Minter. A long-time Carolina Panthers star, Minter led the Camels for 11 seasons (2013-23), including three consecutive 6-5 campaigns.
This year’s Camels, who are coming off their only open week of the season, already have posted several impressive victories, including 49-37 at an East Tennessee State team that’s now 5-2 and ranked in the national Top 25 and 28-19 at home against a very solid Western Carolina squad that was ranked in the Top 25 at the time.
Harris, whose father was a high school football coach in Texas, was a Division Three quarterback during his playing days, and his Campbell offense is off to a prolific start this season, ranking second in the Coastal Athletic Association at 34 points per game.
The Camels’ quarterback, 6-foot-3, 210-pound senior Kamden Sixkiller, is in his second year as the team’s starter and leading the CAA with 279 passing yards per game, a number that also ranks ninth nationally in the FCS ranks. A dual-threat QB, Sixkiller is completing 67 percent of his passing attempts, and he has 14 touchdown throws, plus four more scores in the running game. His 308 yards per game of total offense rank seventh nationally.
Campbell’s other offensive standouts this year include its senior-laden offensive line, led by 6-foot-4, 315-pound guard Kameron Durant, plus junior running back JJ Cowan, junior running back Jon Gullette and junior wide receiver Jyron Waiters.
Durant and Waiters are East Carolina transfers, and Gullette made the jump to Campbell from the Division Two program at Mars Hill. Cowan, a 5-foot-11, 215-pound back and a product of Triton High School in Erwin, N.C., has been a part-time or full-time starter in each of his three seasons with the Camels.
Regardless of what happens the rest of the way this season, Harris appears to have his program on a distinctly upward track, after records of 3-9 in 2024 and just 2-10 a year ago.
Last, but certainly not least…
#4—Shout-out, at the Division Two level, to fifth-year Johnson C Smith coach Maurice Flowers.
Flowers, who has the Golden Bulls off to a 5-1 start this season, is a product of East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte and a proud alumnus of Johnson C Smith University, which also is located in the Queen City. During his five-year JCSU head coaching tenure, Flowers has taken a long-downtrodden program — one that had just a single CIAA football championship in its first 99 years as a member of that league — to its greatest heights.
In 2025, Flowers led JCSU to a 10-2 record that marked the highest single-season win total in program history. The Golden Bulls also captured the program’s first CIAA championship since 1969, they made the first Division Two playoff appearance in program history, and their #18 ranking in the final D2 coaches’ poll represented the highest postseason finish in program history. Last November, Flowers was the obvious choice for his second consecutive CIAA coach of the year honor.
Now Flowers has Johnson C Smith off to a 5-1 start and a perfect 4-0 record in the CIAA, and the Golden Bulls are heavy favorites over Lincoln University in a home game this Saturday afternoon. JCSU once again is playing brilliant defense, with their 11 points per game and 228 yards per game yields both ranking in the top three among the 150-plus programs in the D2 ranks.
Later this month, on Oct. 31, the Bulls will host Virginia State at the Irwin Belk Complex in one of the most anticipated matchups of the CIAA regular season.
Flowers, who was a star quarterback at East Mecklenburg High in the mid-1980s, went on to play QB for Johnson C Smith in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He then spent about 25 years working his way up the high school and college coaching ranks, including assistant coaching stops at JCSU, Shaw, Campbell and Fayetteville State, before getting the Fort Valley State head coaching job prior to the 2020 season. After an abbreviated COVID campaign, then a full year at Fort Valley in 2021, Flowers took the top job at JC Smith.
Now Flowers’ season-by-season records with the Golden Bulls have gone from 2-7 … to 7-4 … to 8-2 … to 10-2, and there’s at least a chance that this year could match or exceed last year’s record-setting campaign.
Congratulations, Coach Flowers and the Golden Bulls, on another job incredibly well-done.
