Sam Hartman is nation’s most overlooked quarterback — and perhaps its most resilient

A recent moment, among many, that provided Sam Hartman with a small dose of perspective came earlier this month, during Wake Forest’s week without a game. In a practice, Hartman attempted to hurdle a teammate and absorbed a discomforting blow to his shoulder. It wasn’t anything serious, though the pain still resonated hours after it happened.

For a little while Hartman, Wake Forest’s fifth-year quarterback, hurt. Yet it was a joyful kind of hurt, one that brought a sense of gratitude. After everything he’d experienced, including the most recent trauma of a blood clot that jeopardized his season before it began, he was thankful to have the chance to play at all, pain or no pain. He knew everything could’ve easily been much different.

“It’s still kind of that thing of like, well, I’d rather be doing this than stabbing myself in the stomach with a blood thinner twice a week,” Hartman, 23, said recently on a picturesque Tuesday, with the oranges and yellows just beginning to turn Wake Forest’s campus into a fall painting. He thought about his journey to this point — disappointments on the field, the personal tragedy off of it.

“From my freshman year of high school to now, there’s been different things that have happened and you kind of think it might be over,” Hartman said of the near-constant adversity that has served to shape him. “And then you turn the corner and somebody sucker punches you. But it’s definitely something that’s just re-amped that notion of, ‘Enjoy the process.’ Love the time with your teammates and kind of give everything that you’ve got every single time you can.”

The latest sucker punch, as Hartman put it, arrived not long after Wake Forest began preseason practice. Hartman experienced a concerning sensation in one of his arms — he and the university have kept private which arm — that caused him to seek medical attention. An evaluation on Aug. 9 revealed a blood clot in the subclavian vein, one of the body’s most critical veins.

The condition, known as Paget-Schroetter syndrome, required immediate attention. Dr. Julie A. Freischlag, the dean of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the CEO of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, led Hartman’s medical team. Doctors first removed the clot, Freischlag said in a statement, then performed surgery to eliminate the pressure on the vein.

Hartman entered into an extended period of uncertainty. His season, which was to begin with such anticipation and hope after he broke through in 2021 to become one of the most prolific quarterbacks in the country, suddenly was in doubt. He took blood thinners. He attempted to rehabilitate his arm. He waited. He wondered.

“It’d be one thing if it was the first time that something crazy has happened in your life,” he said.

Added perspective

For a long time Hartman had come to play for something larger than himself. He’d come to play for a school and a college football program that he hadn’t known all that much about when he’d arrived in Winston-Salem in 2018; a place that he wasn’t so sure about, at first, but one he’d come to embrace. Most of all he’d come to play for the memory of Demitri Allison, who he considered a brother. Allison jumped to his death when Hartman was 15. A close childhood friend of Hartman and his brother, Allison had moved in with the Hartmans and become part of the family.

Days after Allison died in 2015, Hartman played in a high school state championship football game. The sport had become a way, perhaps the way, for Hartman to honor Allison, and before every game Hartman put a marker to his wristband and wrote Allison’s initials. Now the blood clot had placed Hartman’s football future in doubt. For weeks, he took blood thinners and tried to avoid thoughts of worst-case scenarios.

At last, good news arrived on Sept. 2. An ultrasound revealed the best-case scenario.

“The clot was gone, the blood flow was good and he felt great,” Freischlag said.

She cleared Hartman to return. He stepped back onto the field, after only missing the Demon Deacons’ season-opening victory against VMI, with more perspective than he ever had.

“That there was a possibility that I would never get to do that again, and I would not be able to experience the moments with my teammates, with the fans, with my coaches — it really made me appreciate things more,” Hartman said, a little more than a month after his return. It was as if he hadn’t missed a beat. Already he was back to his usual self, which is to say that once again he was excelling in the shadows. For Hartman, that has become perhaps the most normal thing of all.

‘He doesn’t get the credit he deserves’

A year ago, in the midst of leading Wake Forest to its best season since 2006, Hartman became a breakout star, albeit one that doesn’t receive the sort of adulation reserved for others. Indeed, Hartman received national attention when ESPN’s “College GameDay” featured his personal story, and his relationship with Allison, in an emotional segment; and Hartman’s on-field performance commanded praise, too. Still, it is as though he has had to constantly prove himself, over and over.

After throwing for more than 4,200 yards and 39 touchdowns a season ago, Hartman received second-team All-ACC honors. The first-team quarterback, Pitt’s Kenny Pickett, received an invitation to New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist in his final college season. Entering this season, Hartman was not anointed to be Pickett’s successor as the ACC’s best quarterback. That distinction went to N.C. State’s Devin Leary, who was the league’s preseason player of the year.

It was as if Hartman somehow became worse, Dave Clawson, the Wake Forest head coach, said over the summer with more than a hint of sarcasm. More recently, after Wake’s victory against Boston College on Oct. 22, Clawson vented again. He was done, apparently, concealing his frustration with what has perceived as a lack of respect for Hartman, who has continued to excel at a level almost as high as any quarterback in the country.

A little more than halfway through the season, North Carolina freshman Drake Maye has started to generate some Heisman buzz. Hartman, who has been a college quarterback since 2018, and whose numbers this season are comparable to Maye’s despite playing in one fewer game, has not.

“He doesn’t get the credit he deserves,” Clawson recently told reporters, adding that the preseason slights of Hartman — that “he went into the season by some people as the fifth-best quarterback in the ACC” — was “so disrespectful to what he’s done and what he’s accomplished.”

“There’s not another quarterback in the country I’d rather have,” Clawson said. “And the beauty of Sam is he doesn’t care. He just wants to win. I think it bothers me more than it bothers him.”

What Clawson saw in Hartman

If anything, Hartman is used to it by now. Even in his younger years, those in which most future Division I college athletes are dominating local competition, Hartman fought for recognition. He grew up in Charlotte, and in the shadow of another area Sam — Howell, who went onto an acclaimed three seasons as North Carolina’s quarterback before being selected last spring in the NFL draft — who generated the sort of college interest about which Hartman dreamed.

Hartman ran in the same Charlotte-area circles, too, as the Maye brothers, including Luke, the former UNC basketball standout and Drake, the Tar Heels’ current football sensation. Their father, Mark Maye, himself a former UNC quarterback, coached Hartman’s Pop-Warner football team. While Howell and the Maye brothers received no shortage of attention from swooning college coaches, Hartman fought for a chance and held out hope one would eventually come.

He received his first scholarship offer from Elon, where Allison played football, and where Hartman had become a regular visitor. Then came an offer from Charlotte, which back then was in the early days of attempting to build a program from scratch. All these years later, Hartman doesn’t necessarily think it was a matter of what other schools missed as much as it is what Clawson and Wake Forest saw in him.

Hartman then wasn’t about “chasing offers,” as he put it — “like how many pictures can I take and how many college jerseys and really how many offers I can collect and kind of post on my social media.” He knew he needed to get bigger, for one. He knew he needed to prove he could play in the ACC. He knew he needed a chance, somebody to believe in him, and in time that someone became Clawson, who needed a quarterback of the future. They filled each other’s needs, perhaps without knowing it at the time.

“I’m not going to lie to you and say Wake Forest was my dream and I’ve always wanted to bleed black and gold,” said Hartman, who at 10 years old became a Michigan fan when he attended a game there, entranced by the team entering a field surrounded by 100,000 people. When Wake offered him and he committed, “I had no idea what was going on here.”

He knew his dad, a surgeon, had gone to medical school there. He knew it was close to home.

But, Hartman said, “I didn’t know what the offensive style was. I couldn’t tell you if there were quarterbacks that I was going to have to compete against. You name anything that you probably should have looked at, other than it was a really good school, which everyone kind of knows, I was like — yeah. Like, I’m going to play in the ACC.”

And then he won the starting job his freshman year, way back in 2018.

‘I didn’t know what it took’

That was back when he thought things might be easy, at least the football part of his life. He could envision it all then: start for three years in college. Go off to the NFL. Keep proving the doubters wrong. Just watch. He’ll show you.

“I thought I knew what it took,” Hartman said recently, before detailing the years of introspection that has led him to a different conclusion: “I didn’t know what it took.”

He had just finished a midday workout session and now sat in a room on the second floor of Wake’s Manchester Athletic Center, where the football offices used to be. All around, the sights inspired “a lot of flashbacks,” Hartman said: the moment when Clawson offered him a scholarship, the times he spent limping around the building following his leg injury in 2018, the “long, somber walks” in here for film study to “see how bad I played in my freshman year.”

Once, in 2019, Hartman and Clawson walked across campus from this building to Reynolda Village, where they shared a conversation over lunch that Hartman can still recite. At the time, Hartman was “feeling sorry for myself,” he said, and “moping around the whole facility” after he’d lost the starting quarterback position to Jamie Newman. Clawson hosted something of a one-man intervention in an attempt to repair Hartman’s attitude.

Clawson asked Hartman if his long-term goal had changed.

No, Hartman said, acknowledging that it was still to play in the NFL.

“Then why,” Clawson asked, “are you letting this moment in time take away from getting better, taking the reps seriously, preparing like a starter?”

Hartman’s pity party soon ended.

It was but one turning point in this years-long journey, with another coming later that same season, during Cade Carney’s senior speech the night before Wake Forest’s regular-season finale at Syracuse. Carney had been a mentor and a kind of older brother to Hartman; they’d both spent time at Davidson Day School outside of Charlotte. During the speech, which Carney delivered inside what Hartman described as a “haunted hotel ... you literally could film ‘The Shining’ there,” Carney talked about sacrifice and playing for something larger than yourself.

At the time, Hartman was still considering transferring. That speech helped inspire him to stay.

“As you look back, you just want to smack the (expletive) out of your younger self,” he said. “Because you’re like, why aren’t you just saying, ‘Yes sir’ and doing it better or working on it?”

Living in the moment

There have been times when Hartman has been in a rush. A rush, years ago, to get bigger. To prove himself. To go on to the next challenge. He believed he knew what it took to achieve those goals, only to learn he didn’t. In time his own rise has come to personify that of the program he represents. Wake Forest has ascended into the top 10 of the national rankings, and yet is still largely overlooked nationally. Hartman has become one of the nation’s best quarterbacks, and yet is still largely overlooked nationally. Rarely is there such an ideal match between player and program.

The resulting harmony has Wake Forest, the smallest FBS school, experiencing some of the highest football highs in its history. The Demon Deacons are in the top 10 in consecutive seasons for the first time ever. They have a shot at finishing with at least 10 victories in consecutive seasons for the first time ever. Hartman, meanwhile, already owns the school record in passing yards, and has thrown for more than all but three players in ACC history. His 93 touchdown passes rank third in league history.

That was all well and good, but on this particular day, a sunny and warm October fall day, Hartman wanted to get out and fish. That’d come to be his release — “after it’s done,” he said of his playing days, “I hope I can just fish, and not touch a football” — and he’d found a nice secret fishing spot, one he wasn’t inclined to reveal when asked.

“I can’t tell you,” he said with a smile. “Sorry.”

The off week, without a game, had thrown his routine into chaos, thus the time for fishing. Usually things were more set, with film study or meetings. Hartman is an early riser, up by 5:30 most mornings, and so he considered a nap, too, maybe before the fishing expedition.

“I have nothing to do,” he said, in a tone of disappointment. “And most people are like, ‘That’s awesome.’ I’m kind of like, ‘I need to do something.’ ”

Still, he’d come to be better at the art of just being. Of living in the moment. The loss of Allison had taught him empathy, that he could never know what a teammate or anyone else might be going through, and “you just realize things more,” Hartman said, “you kind of understand — it helped me as a leader.” The recent blood clot scare, meanwhile, offered another reminder of how fleeting everything was, how it could be taken away in a cruel instant.

“And even the hard losses,” Hartman said, his mind drifting to a recent crushing defeat in overtime, “like the hard loss against Clemson. Like I sat there after that game and I’m like, ‘Man, that sucked — but remember freshman year, when we went out there and we lost 63-3 and there were more Clemson fans than Wake Forest fans? And there was no shot that we were ever going to get close to beating them?’ ”

And now look. Wake Forest had taken the Tigers into double-overtime. Hartman had proven to be perhaps the best player on the field. He’d come to love the game in a way he hadn’t thought possible, yet to keep it in proper perspective; to learn that staying in the moment, and having a chance to experience another one, could be as rewarding as any victory.