49
Georgia country town in which he was raised, but also
nationally. There are pros and cons: After leading Clemson
to the title, someone posted Lawrence’s cell phone number
online. For a week, he received about one call every five to
10 minutes. “Oh, gosh, it was bad,” he says. “I had to change
my number. I was just hitting decline over and over again.”
But he also met his childhood hero—the reason he
wears number 16—Peyton Manning, and while attend-
ing church services with his girlfriend in Atlanta, he felt
a tap on his shoulder, and turned around to see Atlanta
Hawks point guard Trae Young in the pew. “I’m a big fan,”
he told Lawrence. Mouth agape in awe, Lawrence finally
responded, “I’m a big fan of you!” Lawrence is hard to
miss at 6' 6", so trips anywhere in Clemson come with
their own autograph lines.
Such is life as a football prodigy. Scouts describe Law-
rence as a prototypical NFL quarterback, with a passing
touch to go along with a rocket arm.
Lawrence’s size is a bonus and it’s something his Alabama
counterpart, Tagovailoa, does not have. The Clemson QB’s
instincts are well beyond his years. All of this said, he must
remain in college for two more seasons before becoming
eligible for the draft. He shrugs.
“Not to say I couldn’t be ready to do something like
that, but I think the next
two or three years will be
really good for me,” he says.
“I think I have a lot more
growing to do.”
Lawrence returned to
the Atlanta area earlier this
summer for a session with
Veal. He wants to make his
release faster and more ef-
ficient. They focused on his
following through on the re-
lease longer than normal and
keeping his back leg planted,
something Veal did not teach
Lawrence during his young-
er years. Veal only recently
incorporated the technique
into his program, acquiring
it from Tom House, an NFL
instructor known for training
Tom Brady and Drew Brees.
Those two greats keep their
back leg planted the best, Veal
says, and while Lawrence’s
footwork is good, it could
be better. “It’s like hitting a
baseball. You don’t lift your
back leg off the ground,” he
says. “You keep it connected to the ground and drive.”
Lawrence entered camp with the second-best odds to
win the Heisman Trophy, behind only Tagovailoa. But
the competition will be stiff—both from the QBs that fans
already know and maybe even from the new ones arriving
for the first time on campus. Three of the top five ranked
quarterbacks who signed as part of the 2019 class have
private instructors. Arizona-based coach Mike Giovando,
who has tutored the likes of Colin Kaepernick and Tyrod
Taylor, trains Spencer Rattler, an Oklahoma signee who
will back up Hurts. Wisconsin signee Graham Mertz has
trained in Kansas City with Justin Hoover since sixth
grade, and Ryan Hilinski, who inked with South Carolina,
is with Hernandez’s Team Dime in L.A., where one of their
mottos is, “Never too young to start.”
Sitting in the conference room at Clemson, Lawrence
is eager to talk about all the ways he can improve. As he
discusses everything that came together his freshman sea-
son, which included 15 victories, no losses and a 28-point
title-game win over a team many thought was unbeatable,
he says that it was a special year. “You might never see
anything like that again,” he says.
There are a whole lot of young quarterbacks, parents
and private coaches, though, who think you just might. ±12
True-freshman
QBs who started
at least one game
among the 65
major college
programs, a fifth
straight season
in which that
number hit
double digits.88
Games started
by true freshmen
last season,
nearly twice
the average of
freshman starts
from 2009 to
’13 (47.6).