OLE MISS COACH
# 1 > Hugh Freeze kicked his brown leather boots onto his desk on Sunday afternoon and scrolled through his text messages until he found one from country singer Eric Church, Freeze has the numbers of some of Music Row's top draws in his phone, but it was Church who picked against the Rebels last Saturday morning and then spent the wee hours on Sunday celebrating with them in their locker room beneath Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium. Church had led the players in a Hotty Toddy cheer, and apparently the flim flams, bim bams and by damns had gotten him excited and. . . "he said he's sorry for dropping the f-bomb," Freeze said, chuckling. Church was only playing the percentages when he chose the Crimson Tide during ESPN's College GameDay.
# 2 > While the Rebels had won the meeting last October in Oxford, they hadn't had a victory at Tuscaloosa since 1988 and, in the 120-year history of te series, had never taken two straight. But in the Ole Miss locker room, at least, the optimism was palpable this time. Before he sent his players out on the field against the nation's No. 2 team, Freeze gave one of his shortest pregame speeches. "You can be just who you are," he told his team, "and it can be good enough." There was a hint of magic in the air last season when the Crimson Tide came to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Pop star Katy Perry visited Game Day ( and picked the Rebels, of course ). The Grove, the tailgating mecca in the center of campus, buzzed with hope.
# 3 > Freeze remembers how all the questions began. What if. . .? Can we. . .? The answers turned out to be yes. Young men in pants with wild prints and young women in sundresses descended a six-foot wall, tore down the goalposts and marched them out of the stadium after the 23-17 upset. The story each would tell would probably be better than the game. There was no fairy dust needed at Bryant-Denny last Saturday night, only an Ole Miss team that took a three-hour bus ride, then went toe-to-toe for four-plus hours more against the SEC juggernaut that has won three national titles since coach Nick Saban arrived in 2007. Can we? was suddenly We can. The Rebels were hardly dominant in a 43-37 win that lifted them to 3-0 and No. 3 in the nation, up from 15th.
LONG ARM OF THE PAW
# 1 > A few ribbon boards flickered in Clemson's Memorial Stadium on a Friday night in January 2014, but otherwise Death Valley was mostly dead. Tigers coaches were busy with official visitors they hoped would fill out the remaining spots in their recruiting class, while the majority of Clemson's players prepared to do the thing college students do on a Friday night.
# 2 > On the field two figures moved in near silence. They would consult a binder periodically, then move again. The smaller figure was Artavis Scott, then a freshman receiver. The larger one was the quarterback who coaches believed might finally bring the Tigers back to national-title contention. Deshaun Watson, an early enrollee from Gainesville ( Ga. ) High, had been one campus only a few weeks, but he and his roommate were already planning a takeover of the offense. "We were just trying to make sure we got every detail of the playbook down," Watson says.
# 3 > As they worked, they imagined how the cavernous stadium would feel filled with 81,500 screaming people and rival South Carolina across the line. Watson doesn't have to imagine anymore. He assumed the starting job in the fourth game last year, and now he hopes to lead Clemson to its first ACC title since 2011. Last Thursday he led his team to 3-0 by running for 54 yards and passing for 199 yards and two touchdowns in a 20-17 win at Louisville. If Watson can stay healthy__which didn't happen last season__a conference title could be just the beginning.
# 4 > WHEN CLEMSON co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott was in middle school, his father, Brad, was Florida State's offensive coordinator, and Brad had a special quarterback. The inner confidence that Scott saw in 1993 Heisman Trophy winner and national champion Charlie Ward strikes him as eerily similar to what he perceives in Watson.
Watson started as a freshman at Gainesville High and led his team to a 10-2 record. When he attended a football camp at Clemson that summer, Watson had already reached his full 6' 2" height, and his arm and his mind were developed beyond his years. Chad Morris, Clemson's offensive coordinator at the time, was so taken that he made it his mission to ensure the young QB wore a paw on his helmet in college. As a kid, Watson had loved Urban Meyer's Florida teams__he wanted to go "from Gainsville to Gainsville," he says__but the time Clemson began recruiting Watson, Meyer had resigned at Florida and wouldn't take the Ohio State job for another six months.
# 5 > Besides, Watson's mother, Deann, loved Morris and Tigers coach Dabo Swinney. Though Watson was in the recruiting class of 2014, he committed to Clemson on National Signing Day 12. "Sometimes when you get started with a recruit so early, you can become the old girlfriend when the new school start calling," says Scott, who was then Clemson's receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. But Watson never wavered, which reinforced the staff's belief they had landed a special player.
THAT FEELING deepened during spring practice in 2014. "Typically a five-star freshman comes in, and it doesn't go as easy as he or everybody else thinks it's going to go," Scott says. "The thing that stood out with Deshaun was the game was really slow for him." After cameos against Georgia and South Carolina State, Watson replaced starter Cole Stoudt with his team trailing 3-0 at Florida State. He completed 19 of 28 throws for 266 yards while running for another 36 yards and a score to nearly pull off the upset. "It felt like a movie," Watson says of the 23-17 loss. "Everything was in slow motion." Swinney made Watson the starter the next week, and the freshman responded with a school-record six touchdown passes in a 50-35 win over North Carolina. He followed that by throwing two TDs and running for two more in a 41-0 rout of N.C. State. Says Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren, "He demolished us."
# 6 > But Watson broke a bone in his right hand the next week, against Louisville. And when he returned after three-games absence to face Georgia Tech, he promptly sprained the LCL in his left knee, departing the 28-6 loss in the first quarter. Back at practice five days later, Watson tore his ACL. It turned out he'd had untreated ligament damage dating to high school. By then only one game remained, against South Carolina. Team doctors said Watson wouldn't do further damage if he wore a brace, so with a chance to live out the scene he imagined months earlier, he chose to play. "I wanted to finish strong," says Watson, who completed 14 of 19 passes for 269 yards and two touchdowns in a 35-17 win, Clemson's first against the Gamecocks since 2008.
# 7 > After Watson had surgery, he spent the next nine months ressuring everyone that he was not as fragile as his freshman year suggested. Still, Clemson coaches want Watson to drive the car, not be the car. "We tell Deshaun he's got a talented cast around him," Scott says. "He doesn't have to make every play." But Watson can do that, and he knows it. So when the Tigers need heroics, Watson will be ready to make those plays.
