QB Gio Lopez gets a fresh start at Wake Forest in a reunion with his former offensive coordinator

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Gio Lopez has found comfort with the familiar, even in a new place.

The left-handed quarterback has moved on from the spotlight of NFL coaching great Bill Belichick's first college season at North Carolina. He's at Wake Forest now, another in-state Atlantic Coast Conference school that, unlike Lopez's Tar Heels, had a successful debut season under its new coach Jake Dickert.

And Lopez knows exactly what to expect with offensive coordinator Rob Ezell, who helped him thrive before at South Alabama.

“It gives me a lot of comfort, also just being with him in the spring,” Lopez said during the first week of the Demon Deacons' preseason camp. "I didn’t get to experience the spring last year. So just being back with him, being comfortable with Coach Ezell, knowing him since I was 16 years old. So he’s known me like the back of his hand.

“So I just trust his play calls. I never really question his judgment. Just able to go out there with full-blown trust and belief in him.”

Lopez's transfer feels a lot farther than the 85 miles that separate the Wake Forest and UNC campuses.

A year ago, he was jumping into preseason camp at UNC as Belichick — who led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles — prepared for a closely watched transition to college. Lopez hadn't committed to UNC until after spring practices, so every camp snap marked his first live work there.

He won the starting job and had a 39-yard deep ball on his first throw during a season-opening touchdown drive, but things went badly from there. UNC lost in a blowout in what became a messy 4-8 season that ended with Lopez needing surgery for a left-leg fracture suffered in the season finale at N.C. State.

The vibes are different at Wake Forest. This is an elite private school with the smallest undergraduate enrollment (about 5,600) of any power conference program, led by a coach who climbed through college football's lower ranks to get here.

Yet Dickert's first team surprised by going 9-4 in a season that included shutting down Lopez and UNC before beating a Southeastern Conference opponent (Mississippi State) in a bowl game. That offense leaned more on the run game to adapt to the strengths of NFL-bound back Demond Claiborne and the offensive line, but the plan is to shift closer to Ezell's preferred approach in Year 2.

Lopez arrived knowing that scheme well. Now he's busy scrambling around with a green No. 3 jersey and sporting the team's black helmet with gold WF lettering, battling a defense expected to be a strength again. Monday's first official practice included some turnovers and miscues against that unit, but Lopez might be better equipped to push through setbacks after his UNC stint.

“He's used the term with me: ‘I’ve never failed that loud before,'" Dickert told The Associated Press, "meaning that spotlight, that scene, that hype. Failure is life's greatest teacher. I think he's really taken that and he's turned whatever people would perceive as failure, he's internalized that word in a very mature way. In his book, that's learning, growing and getting better.”

Lopez threw for 1,747 yards and 10 touchdowns while running for 133 yards and three scores in 11 games last year, which included being knocked from two games due to injury. He never threw for more than 216 yards in a game, with every outing offering constant scrutiny as Belichick's first starting QB at the college level.

"Something I remember, we won against Stanford but I fumbled in like the second quarter,” Lopez said last month. “I remember the first question being like, ‘When you fumbled, did you feel like you weren't going to go back in the game, you were going to get benched?'

“I was like, ‘Wow, we won the game.’ It was stuff like that, something that I never had to experience.”

Yet rewind to a year earlier, and Lopez's performance under Ezell at South Alabama offers hope.

Lopez threw for 2,559 yards and 18 touchdowns with the Sun Belt program, including a 432-yard day against North Texas to open that 2024 season. He averaged 8.2 yards per attempt, 1.5 yards better than his output at UNC.

He also ran for 465 yards and seven scores for the Jaguars, including a 105-yard rushing day against Appalachian State. Lopez had three other games of at least 50 yards on the ground — a threshold he never reached with the Tar Heels.

"Anything that went on, I’m just thankful for,” Lopez said. "I don’t regret anything that happened. I got to make a bond with Coach Belichick that I’m super thankful for, and not a lot of people can say they did. I learned a lot from him and I’m just super thankful for everything that happened.” ___

AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football