Isn't That Already Me?

— AP Top 5 (As of November 23, 2020) —

1. Georgia : 7W–0L

2. Notre Dame : 8W–0L

3. Alabama : 6W–1L

4. Ohio State : 4W–0L

5. Clemson : 7W–1L

November 23, 2020 — Clemson, South Carolina — Clemson University — Allen N. Reeves Football Complex

Week 13 of the NCAA college football season had arrived, yet everyone was talking about one thing and one thing only.

The Except One Game.

Georgia versus Clemson.

Some quarters had gone so far as to call it "the most anticipated game in NCAA history," and the EOG was drawing attention on a massive scale.

The reason, of course, was the two quarterbacks.

Moi and Trevor Lawrence.

"That's it, Trevor! That's exactly it!"

Back when the major programs of NCAA Division 1 had lost their minds over RFM last year, Clemson — holding Trevor Lawrence — had stood unmoved and focused solely on their own plan.

They wanted to recreate the glory of their 2018 national championship and pull off a repeat, and they did everything a program could do to make it happen.

And when the season began, Clemson came roaring out of the gate.

Having won their season opener against Georgia Tech, they ripped off thirteen straight victories through the end of November. In the ACC Championship that followed, they demolished Virginia 62–17, then won the Fiesta Bowl that would decide who advanced to the national title game.

That opponent had been AP No. 2 Ohio State — and their national championship opponent was to be AP No. 1, LSU.

A flawless bracket, on paper.

If AP No. 3 Clemson knocked off No. 2 first and then took down No. 1, they would have forged the greatest era in college football history.

But the result was devastatingly hollow.

A 25–42 loss.

Clemson had taken the field vowing to become the best team in the NCAA once more, and then, while leading 17–7, they collapsed and surrendered 21 points in the blink of an eye.

And all the while, LSU's quarterback Joe Burrow ran wild — every one of his team's 42 points coming by his own hand and feet, on his way to 463 passing yards and five touchdown passes.

Trevor Lawrence, by contrast, turned in a wretched stat line: a 48.6 percent completion rate (18-of-37) and zero touchdown passes.

And for a brief moment after that, an opinion began to surface.

"Isn't Trevor Lawrence weak in big games?"

In the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State just before, his completion rate and passing yardage had amounted to a modest 54.5 percent and 259 yards. Granted, he threw two crucial touchdowns and ripped off a 67-yard rushing score himself, but the sudden plunge from a completion rate that had sat above 70 percent all season was hard to explain.

Still, almost no one took it seriously.

He had delivered in the playoffs against Notre Dame and in the national championship against Alabama during his freshman season, after all.

In ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠particular, the total command he showed in the second quarter against Notre Dame became the decisive moment that cemented his reputation as the best quarterback in the NCAA.

But a coil of doubt, once raised, rarely disappears completely.

Clemson's head coach Dabo Swinney understood that better than anyone.

"How's Trevor doing?"

"Good. He looks fully recovered."

"Glad to hear it."

Before last week's road trip to Notre Dame, Trevor Lawrence had tested positive for COVID.

Per NCAA protocol, he was ruled out of the game — and in that game, Clemson suffered an upset at Notre Dame's hands.

Backup quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei played remarkably well, but that day the Tigers simply couldn't contain Notre Dame's rushing attack.

And that was precisely the point.

The absence of a starting quarterback hits a team in a dozen different places at once, because a reliable, elite quarterback is what binds a roster together. It was a small, vivid demonstration of that truth.

Thankfully, Trevor Lawrence had returned unscathed.

And in form that looked pretty sharp, at that.

Night, after practice had ended.

Dabo Swinney's office.

Clemson's head coach was talking with his right hand, defensive coordinator Brent Venables.

"We've kept it very well hidden."

"We have."

"Whew—"

A loaded phrase — kept it hidden. Swinney exhaled and went on.

"Trevor's going to try to run. No doubt about it."

"Does Tony know?"

"He does."

"If that boy starts running, it means he's cornered."

"He cracks under pressure."

Swinney and his coordinators knew full well that Trevor Lawrence was vulnerable in big games.

Or to be precise — vulnerable to pocket pressure.

The higher the caliber of opponent, the more often the O-line was bound to break down, and once that happened two or three times, Trevor Lawrence lost his composure.

A pro-style quarterback would turn into a dual-threat — without ever realizing it himself.

For example, last year's Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State.

In that game, Trevor Lawrence attempted the most rushes of his college career: sixteen.

He averaged 6.7 yards a carry and scored a touchdown.

But every one of those runs was improvised.

None of it was the plan.

And in the national title game against LSU that followed, he ran ten more times and punched in another touchdown. Looking further back, nearly every game in which Lawrence ran more than his season average (5.5 attempts) had unfolded as a situation where passing simply wasn't an option.

Of course, one could argue otherwise.

"The boy's got a full deck of talent."

"…."

"People think that when the passing game dries up, he can just take off and run to win the game. But we know better, don't we. We know that's not the truth of it."

After the loss in the LSU championship game, Dabo Swinney shut himself up at home.

He could have rewritten history, and he had fallen short by a single stroke. To stomach the self-loathing that came with that, he needed hours alone — so he lay on the couch in his darkened study, watching game film.

And then, some time later, Clemson's head coach bolted upright.

His eyes had gone wide.

A single whisper slipped out of his mouth.

"Oh, my God…."

Hands flying, Swinney rewound the same clip again and again — until at last he dropped the tablet and clutched his head.

On the screen, Trevor Lawrence was running.

"His vision narrows in an instant."

"…."

"The receivers are wide open right in front of him — any other day he'd spot it and let it fly, but he can't."

So why hadn't he noticed sooner?

The answer was simple: the winning hadn't stopped.

Up until the title game loss to LSU, Clemson had won all 29 games Lawrence had played since his arrival.

So no one treated it as a big deal.

The results were good anyway, and the quarterback wasn't exactly slumping.

The moment the truth dawned on him, Swinney resolved to bury it before those fringe, dismissable doubts could spread any further — and he had worked at that all season long.

The results had been excellent.

He had stripped Trevor Lawrence's rushing attempts down to a minimum while shaping the offense so that only his strengths showed up on the field.

With a quarterback this good already entering his third year, building a team around him hadn't been hard.

And then there was the special circumstance of COVID.

Within the ACC, there were only two teams worth fearing.

With none of the usual gauntlet of tough mid-season opponents, Lawrence had been free to flash his ability more dazzlingly than ever.

But the game ahead would be different.

The opponent was Georgia — the AP No. 1 team in the nation.

And more than that —

"He's clearly aware of it."

"So it seems."

Since coming back from the positive test, Trevor Lawrence was burning with a will to win unlike anything they'd seen from him.

With his NFL entry planned for next year, there'd been a sense he was taking it easy this season — but for the next game alone, it looked like he intended to empty out everything he had.

Lawrence already stood at the summit of the NCAA, which meant the EOG would matter to him even more than a national championship game.

And there was a debt to settle, too.

Specifically — the loss in the 2018 U.S. Army All-American Bowl.

If he couldn't win the game ahead, that loss would latch itself onto the question mark hanging over his big-game record.

At the same time, the throne of the NCAA's best quarterback — and very likely the 2020 Heisman Trophy — would slip from his grasp.

Everything, all at once, rode on this game.

The EOG week had only just begun.

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

Same hour — Athens, Georgia — University of Georgia — Vandiver Hall, Room 607

"Haha. Are you serious?"

"Yep! It was absolute chaos."

"So what happened?"

"What do you think happened."

With all my work for the day done, I'd video-called Mom — and heard a pretty entertaining story.

Thanksgiving fell on Thursday this week, and the Clemson game was two days after that. Apparently, Mom and Grandma had gotten into a bit of a tug-of-war over how to spend those days.

Grandma proposed watching the Saturday game in Hanahauoli, while Mom insisted it should be done in Paia.

Both of them loved nothing more than gathering people together and putting out a feast, so I suppose each wanted to summon her own familiar crowd into her own familiar space.

The standoff lasted longer than I expected.

In the end, Mom won.

"Are you eating properly?"

"Of course. Don't worry about that."

"You should be getting some Hawaiian food. Or Korean, at least."

"Yeah… I do miss that stuff a little."

The dining hall food?

I genuinely had no complaints there.

Whenever I craved something greasy or borderline unhealthy but delicious, I could just hunt down an on-campus joint with the guys.

It was only the food of Hawaii, and Korean food, that tugged at me a little.

The kimchi in our mini-fridge was nearly gone, too.

"Oh, but apparently a restaurant's opening."

"A restaurant?"

"Yeah. A place that sells Hawaiian food. They say it opens next January, so I'm kind of looking forward to it."

"Ooh — that's really good news."

"Right?"

After chatting a while longer, I hung up with Mom and walked over to the window, pulling the curtain aside.

Too cold to open it.

A few students were drifting along the streets below, and a peculiar air of expectation had settled over the whole campus.

Everyone was talking about the EOG.

Though the distance was short, Georgia and Clemson sat on opposite sides of a state line, and their rivalry carried the nickname the "Border Rivalry."

But it was never a rivalry that drew the spotlight the way Auburn–Alabama did — people had always treated it as just another football game.

Not this year, though.

Because of me and Trevor Lawrence.

They were saying the NCAA's best quarterback would ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be decided.