Deshaun Watson Is the Superstar College Football Needs

I have spent the last seven minutes trying to entice Deshaun Watson into saying what the rest of us are thinking: that one year from now—maybe one month from now—Clemson’s blossoming quarterback will be the face of college football, reassembled knee and all.

He won't take the bait. He refuses to celebrate his record-setting, expectation-shaping high school career. He doesn’t puff about scoring four touchdowns against South Carolina on one leg as a true freshman. He doesn't predict the touchdowns still to come. 

The soft-spoken sophomore walks me through his rehab and even breezes by his recently acquired passion for fashion. He doesn’t speak of individual greatness; he talks about his maturing sneaker collection.

Then, suddenly, a breakthrough.

“I am an all-around player,” Watson says, as his voice kicks up to the appropriate gear. “I’m like LeBron James.”

There it is. The most electrifying young quarterback in college football just compared himself to the greatest athlete of our generation. My goodness, the page views. 

As I celebrate my efforts, laughter engulfs the air. And not just any laugh. A kind of deep belly laugh that exudes comfort and confidence, and I realize—he's not even talking about football. 

“I can drive, I can shoot, I can pull up,” he continues, tactically keeping his skill sets in the present. “To be honest, you can't game-plan against me.”

Watson isn’t the least bit concerned with football for the time being; right now he wants to talk about his high school hardwood exploits.  

A three-year starter for the Gainesville High School basketball team, Watson once scored 21 points in a single quarter—doing so on seven three-pointers. His high school football coach was in the building that night and couldn’t believe that one of the greatest football players he has ever coached was doing these things in a different sport.

“The kid could have made it as a college basketball player,” Gainesville High School football coach Bruce Miller said. “He could shoot the eyes out of it.”

Talk to anyone who has worked with the young man, and they will tell you a Watson story: basketball, football or life in general. They will all rave about his physical gifts and then slip seamlessly into a deep appreciation for a young man mature beyond his years who is completely aware of the hype around him, yet unfazed by it. 

As we continue our conversation, I move past the comparisons to LeBron, hoping to steer things closer to his upcoming coronation as the face of college football. Despite his unwillingness to embrace the title, at no time did he tell me I was wrong.

Brasher than Marcus Mariota but calmer than Johnny Manziel and Jameis Winston, the quietly confident Watson is the one his sport has been waiting for.

Hello World

Image via Bruce Miller

There are two kinds of superstars in college football. There are those who develop into stars, and there are those whose talent overwhelms development and thrusts them into the spotlight immediately. Watson has always been the second kind.

After Gainesville senior Blake Sims exhausted his high school eligibility and took his talents to Alabama, Bruce Miller had his next quarterback figured out. It was practically etched in stone.

The spring after Sims left, however, a lanky eighth-grader joined the Georgia high school program a few months ahead of schedule, giving Miller another option at quarterback. In his more than 40 years in coaching, only one freshman quarterback had ever started.

Then he watched Deshaun Watson throw. Then he watched the 14-year-old complete 22 of 25 passes in the team’s spring game. 

“When I first saw him, I just couldn’t believe I would coach somebody that good for four years,” Miller said. “We had a quarterback in place, and Deshaun just flat came in here and beat him out. He never played a down for JV. Once he started, he started 48 straight games for us.”

In those 48 games, Watson accounted for 17,134 total yards—nearly 10 miles in football production—threw 155 touchdowns and found the end zone 217 times in total, setting the Georgia state record in all three categories.

Image via Bruce Miller

He won a state championship his junior season. That same season the self-proclaimed "LeBron James" came within a few points of a second state championship in basketball. And just like that, a legend began. 

What happened next was predictable. Coaches flocked to Gainesville en masse hoping they could get Watson to reconsider his verbal commitment to Clemson, a decision he made as a sophomore. Urban Meyer and Jimbo Fisher knew it would be tough to convince him to look elsewhere, but each still came and delivered his finest pitch in person.

Ultimately, Watson stuck by the coach who saw him as the next Vince Young before anyone else—the coach who is no longer at Clemson.

The Coach Who Almost Couldn’t Say Goodbye

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Offered an opportunity to go back home and coach a sleeping football giant, Chad Morris could see that his dream had come true.

When the SMU job opened, the former Clemson offensive coordinator was a natural fit given his Texas high school coaching roots. And as much as he knew he couldn’t possibly say no, he nearly didn’t pull the trigger on his dream position because of his young quarterback.

“It was almost to the point I didn’t take the job,” Morris said. “I was very, very close—even after the South Carolina game when all the stuff was starting to come out—to just saying that I can’t leave this kid. That’s how much he means to me and my family.”

For nearly his entire coaching tenure at Clemson, Morris was focused on landing one player—this player. He watched him play football extensively. He watched him play basketball. He got to know Watson and his family.

He saw flashes of Vince Young, something he reiterated to head coach Dabo Swinney when he saw him early on. Morris knew he had to have him.

“I basically took him over,” Morris said. “Everyone else was recruiting kids year in and year out, and I was recruiting one kid for four years. Essentially it felt that way.”

Tyler Smith/Getty Images

Watson committed to Clemson in February 2012. It was up to Morris to ensure that his verbal would be put on paper nearly two years later. Helping him along the way was a natural fit that was impossible to duplicate. When Watson visited Clemson, he didn’t want to leave.

“It was different and very unique,” Watson said. “It was close to home, but the supporting cast was amazing. I just loved everything about it and felt at home here.”

After Watson's successful—albeit injury-plagued freshman season—Morris decided to take the SMU job after some deliberation.

While these situations are often delicate, this particular change in scenery was unique. There were no regrets, no ill will on Watson’s end. The two shared an emotional goodbye before he left. While Watson was sad to see his biggest supporter leave, he was happy for his friend.

“We knew what was best for each other,” Watson said. “I wish he could have stayed, but he had to take the next step to be a head coach. I am going to be his biggest fan out there.”

To Infinity and Beyond

His first collegiate touchdown pass was a masterpiece—a moment of magnificent, unaltered football physics.

Tossed into one of the nation’s most hostile environments, with the masses of his home state hoping to watch the prodigy who left them fall flat on his face, Watson uncorked a throw against Georgia that told a tremendous tale.

“My mindset was to show the world what I was about and what I could do at this level,” Watson said. “Just go out and dominate. And that’s what I did on my first drive. It was easier than I what expected. Just overall, I was ahead of the game.”

The confidence has started to crystallize. The superstar suddenly sounds the part—not arrogant or brash, but supremely at ease with who he is and what he can become. Given the turbulent nature of this past year, he's had to rework his outlook.

On November 29 last year, having battled back from a broken finger that sidelined him earlier in the season, Watson scored four touchdowns against rival South Carolina with a torn ACL. On one leg, the true freshman completed 14 of 19 passes for 269 yards, passing for two touchdowns and rushing for another pair.

After toying with the idea of playing in the bowl game, his season ended there. Even with extremely limited reps, Watson accounted for 19 touchdowns and only two interceptions.

Back with a Vengeance 

In the days after his surgery, Watson locked himself inside with tight end Stanton Seckinger, who also had his knee repaired. “We laid around, played games and got fat,” Watson joked. 

Since then, he’s done everything in his power to ensure he is ready for September 5.

His rehab included a solid dosage of film. Mike Vick, Cam Newton, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are all regulars in the Watson film catalog. “They were and are successful at their jobs,” Watson said. “I try not basing my game off of theirs because I’m my own player, but I want to see what they did to be successful.”

His name isn’t parallel to those who he’s trying to emulate to a point—not yet, at least. But expectations for the young man have started to reach a point of no return, even with such a limited sample size.

Tyler Smith/Getty Images

“I embrace it all. I embrace and really enjoy everything that comes with the business that I am in,” Watson said on living up to such immense expectations. “I have seen guys take bad steps and good steps from it. Going through the recruiting process, I knew what was coming. This is the position I wanted to be in and I knew I was going to be in. I want to take full advantage of it.”

Given the plethora of gifted skill position talent he will have to work with—wideouts Mike Williams and Artavis Scott, for starters—Watson will not go at it alone. Pencil in last year’s production over the course of a full season with so many other pieces in place, and a spectacular opportunity comes into focus.

The momentum has reached a point where we can talk about Clemson as a title contender and actually mean it. We can put to bed all tired talks of "Clemsoning," that this power will never be able to soar beyond this elevated plateau.

“The ceiling is winning the opener, of course. Then it’s about taking that next step,” Watson said. “Not just winning 10 games like the last four years, but winning it all. Winning every game, winning a conference championship and going to the Playoff.”

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.