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WINSTON-SALEM (AP) — Riley Skinner sometimes made it look easy during his first three years at Wake Forest.

He claimed an unlikely ACC title as a redshirt freshman in 2006, then followed that with consecutive bowl victories. He won more games than any quarterback in school history with a full season to spare.

And after helping turn one of the ACC's worst programs into a consistent winner, Skinner isn't about to coast through his senior year. Not with so much still left for the Demon Deacons to accomplish.

"Being through it for 4½ years now, there's still just as much to learn now as there was back then, which I never would have imagined," Skinner said. "(I thought) I would be playing for four years and I'd come in the fifth year and just kind of cruise into it and think I had everything figured out, but that's definitely the least of the case. I've got a lot to work on."

So do his Wake Forest teammates, if they plan on extending the most successful run in the program's history.

To keep that momentum going, the Demon Deacons must rebuild a draft-depleted defense that was a cornerstone of its rise to prominence and reboot a running game that all but abandoned them last season. Not even one of the nation's more accurate passers could overcome a sputtering ground game that slid to a No. 92 national ranking.

Skinner may have won 26 games during his three seasons as the starter while completing 67 percent of his passes, but even he could only do so much with a rushing offense that averaged 121 yards and produced three 100-yard rushers.

Senior Kevin Harris, who has played both tailback and fullback, entered preseason camp as the leader in a three-man race that also includes former ACC rookie of the year Josh Adams and Brandon Pendergrass. Nagging injuries to those two helped contribute to the Demon Deacons' lack of productivity on the ground.

"We had a skeleton crew at running back," coach Jim Grobe said. "If we don't run the ball better, we put too much pressure on Riley, and that's not something we want to do. We know we've got a good quarterback. That's the thing — we can't be so hard-headed that we just want to run into a wall every snap, running the football, but at the same time, if we try to throw the ball too much like we did at the start of last season, if the other 10 guys don't respond, then it doesn't matter how good Riley plays, we're not going to be a very good offensive football team."

With nine starters back, the offense figures to carry the load for a defense that lost four key performers to the NFL draft, including Butkus Award-winning linebacker Aaron Curry and shutdown cornerback Alphonso Smith.

The starting linebacking corps is gone, so is three-fourths of the secondary — cornerback Brandon Ghee is the only returning starter there — and 13 redshirt freshmen and sophomores are sprinkled throughout the defense's depth chart.

"They're all young, very exciting, a lot of talent, a lot of speed and strength," Ghee said. "They just don't have the experience right now."

But certainly, all eyes this season will be on Skinner, who took over as a mop-topped redshirt freshman and helped lead the Demon Deacons to their first ACC title since 1970 and an appearance in the Orange Bowl. That remarkable ride is being brought to the big screen in the upcoming movie "The 5th Quarter," which focuses on linebacker Jon Abbate and the death of his younger brother before that season.

Now it's up to Skinner to author his own Hollywood ending for his college career.

"I'm curious to see how it's going to turn out," Skinner said.