Trevor Lawrence Begins Final Season of College Football with Gem at Wake Forest

Many of the first-round prospects for the 2021 NFL draft have opted out of the 2020 college football season, but the presumptive No. 1 pick, Clemson's Trevor Lawrence, demonstrated in Saturday night's 37-13 season-opening win over Wake Forest that he will ball out this fall.

Speaking with ESPN's Tom Rinaldi during a College GameDay segment Saturday morning, the junior quarterback said he'll graduate in December, adding, "I'm planning on this being my last season."

It wasn't exactly surprising news. Lawrence has been projected as a top pick in the 2021 draft since before he even took his final snap at Cartersville High School in Georgia. By the time he led Clemson to the 2018 national championship as a true freshman, no one would've believed Lawrence would spend four years in college.

All the same, it was refreshing to hear a star player saying the quiet part loud.

Even in the postgame interviews at their respective bowl games (or final NCAA tournament games, if you want to consider hoops prospects too) underclassmen who are projected top draft picks almost always say something along the lines of: "I'll have to sit down with my family and my coaches after the season and make that difficult decision."

It's kind of cool to already have unofficial confirmation that Lawrence will be the reward for whichever NFL team executes the most successful tank job.

His season-opening performance against the Demon Deacons was an early reminder that said lucky NFL team will get a golden-haired surgeon who makes everything look effortless.

Lawrence completed 22 of 28 passes for 351 yards and a touchdown. He also had two short rushing scores in the first quarter.

The touchdown pass was a thing of beauty. On a third-down play in the red zone, Lawrence stood tall in the pocket and flicked the ball to J.C. Chalk in the corner of the end zone, as if he were casually throwing a dart in a pub.

Lawrence also connected on several exquisite deep passes along the sideline while leading Clemson on not one, but two first-half touchdown drives of more than 90 yards.

Heck, even the incomplete passes generally looked great.

The first pass attempt of the game was a timing route on which his intended receiver, Amari Rodgers, simply lost his footing when he made his cut. On the second incompletion, Rodgers was wide open in the end zone, where Lawrence lofted the ball for what would have been a 33-yard touchdown—if Rodgers hadn't straight-up dropped it because he was seemingly afraid he would crash into the field-goal post.

On another incompletion, Lawrence deftly escaped the pressure from a corner blitz and found Braden Galloway near the sideline, but the latter was shoved out of bounds before completing the catch. And on the final incompletion, Lawrence put the ball perfectly where only Frank Ladson Jr. could get it in the back of the end zone, but he dropped it.

In other words, Lawrence easily could have finished with north of 400 yards and two more passing touchdowns, even though his night of light work ended before the third quarter did.

Just about the only thing Lawrence did wrong all night was take a 16-yard sack on 3rd-and-6 on the opening drive—which, in classic Dabo Swinney fashion, was the first thing Clemson's head coach mentioned as room for improvement in his halftime interview with ESPN's Allison Williams.

The near-perfect performance was quite the 180 from how Lawrence began his sophomore season.

He threw a pair of interceptions in the 2019 opener against Georgia Tech and had tossed five picks by the end of Week 3. It wasn't until the fourth quarter of the Week 5 nail-biter against North Carolina that he began to snap out of the early slump and regain his championship-caliber form.

Rick Scuteri/Associated Press

This year, though, on a Saturday when quite a few Power Five offenses looked rustier than a long-forgotten bicycle, not a speck of proverbial iron oxide was to be found on Lawrence's game.

In fairness, Wake Forest ain't Alabama or Georgia. The Demon Deacons had to replace the two best players (Essang Bassey and Amari Henderson) from a secondary that wasn't anything special in the first place. Lawrence had 272 yards and four touchdowns in a 52-3 blowout of this team last year.

But it also bears mentioning that the Tigers were breaking in several new starters too. Last year's star receivers Tee Higgins and Justyn Ross are gone, leaving Rodgers, Ladson and Joseph Ngata to become Lawrence's new favorite targets.

It didn't matter, though. The clear front-runner to win the Heisman Trophy rather indiscriminately spread the love among nine targets. (Clemson ended the night with 13 players making a reception, but backup quarterbacks D.J. Uiagalelei and Taisun Phommachanh made four of those passes.)

It will be some time before Lawrence is tested in 2020. Clemson hosts The Citadel in Week 3, has an open date for Week 4 and doesn't draw a preseason AP Top 25 team until it travels to Notre Dame in early November.

But let's be sure to enjoy watching this phenom pad his stats for the duration of his self-proclaimed final season of college football.

Guys this talented only come around once every decade or so.

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.