WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson said Monday that he was not the anonymous ACC coach quoted as saying Louisville’s Lamar Jackson “has no shot at playing quarterback in the NFL” in an early-January Sports Illustrated article written by Pete Thamel.

“This is what’s called fake news,” Clawson said Monday after practice.

Wake Forest officials reached out to to UL Sunday to assure them that Clawson was not responsible for those comments, nor did he believe them to be an accurate representation of Jackson’s ability.

“I never said those things. I have great respect for Lamar Jackson as a football player,” Clawson said. “I think he is one of the elite players not only in the ACC, but in the country. I respect the way he plays the quarterback position, and those comments in no way reflect the respect I have for him. I would never say that.”

During Louisville media day Saturday at Papa Johns Cardinal Stadium, Jackson was asked who he thought was responsible for the derogatory comments regarding his NFL potential in January.

"Yeah, I heard Wake Forest. I heard (it was) the Wake Forest coach," Jackson said, as reported by the Louisville Courier-Journal. "But we won, so I don't really care.

"I'm in college still. He can't judge the future. God could. Not him. He's not God. So I'm not worried."

The SI article compared the skills of Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson to those of Heisman Trophy winner Jackson, and used comments from an anonymous ACC coach represented as having faced both players.

“Watson has a chance to be at least as good as (former Florida State quarterback Jameis) Winston,” the anonymous coach said in the original Sports Illustrated article in January. “We played he and Lamar Jackson, and Jackson has no shot at playing quarterback in the NFL. None. He can’t make the throws and can’t read coverages. He’s not going to have a chance.”

“I wasn’t even contacted by the writer of that article for that piece,” Clawson said.

Four other ACC teams — all from the Atlantic Division — played both Clemson and Louisville last season: Boston College, Florida State, North Carolina State and Syracuse. The original article didn’t specifically state that the games against those quarterbacks were played in 2016.

This all comes in the direct shadow of the Wakeyleaks controversy, which engulfed the college football landscape for a couple weeks last December.

Though former Wake radio announcer Tommy Elrod reportedly had shared information with mutliple schools, the issue first came to light after a member of Wake’s traveling party found materials pertaining to the Deacs' gameplan on the PJCS sideline the night before the matchup between Louisville and Wake.

The Deacs largely held Jackson in check in that contest and clinged to a 12-10 lead at the end of the third quarter. The Cards scored the final 44 points of the contest, including 34 in the fourth quarter to win, 44-12.

Jackson passed for 145 yards and rushed for another 153 in the victory but was sacked five times, fumbled the ball twice and threw an interception in what may have been his most underwhelming performance of the season to that point.

Jackson went on to become Louisville’s first Heisman Trophy winner, earning nearly double the first-place votes of runner-up Watson. He accounted for an astonishing 51 touchdowns on the season, throwing for 3,543 yards and rushing for another 1,571.

“I think he is one of the very best players in all of college football, and one of the most dynamic quarterbacks I’ve seen play the game,” Clawson said when asked what he would personally say to Jackson. “I have great respect for him as a player and how he’s developed as a quarterback.”

Hard feelings or not, the budding rivalry between the two schools will renew in earnest when the Cards travel Oct. 29 to Winston-Salem.