This is exactly what Deshaun Watson had in mind when, as a sophomore at Gainesville High, he committed to play quarterback for Clemson.
“When I committed as a 15-year-old, I knew this program was going to be special,” Watson said. “I bought into where this program was going, and I wanted to be part of it.”
He held firmly to his commitment, politely rebuffing tardy recruiting efforts by Georgia and Alabama and Auburn and Ohio State, among others. Ranked the nation’s No. 1 dual-threat quarterback by ESPN, he enrolled early at Clemson in January 2014. Three years later, already having earned his degree, he will try to win the national championship in his final college game.
“My journey has been special,” Watson said over the weekend. “It has been the best three years of my life.
“A win would top everything off.”
Clemson hasn’t won the national championship since the 1981 season. It fell just short last season, losing to Alabama 45-40 in the title game despite Watson passing for 405 yards and running for 73.
Now Clemson (13-1) and Alabama (14-0) meet again in the College Football Playoff championship game Monday night at Raymond James Stadium.
“It’s very hard to get second chances in life,” Watson said, “and for us to be able to come back and have another chance at it against a very good team is a blessing. We want to go full throttle at it.”
For a full year, getting back to the title game “was in the back of our minds,” Watson said. “But we didn’t focus on it too much because we know it’s a whole different year. We had to go re-earn it.
“But the pain of walking off the field (after last year’s championship game), you can’t really just release that. It’s always going to be with you for the rest of your life, especially being that close and losing to them in that way. We just kind of had to grind it out, stay focused on the task at hand, and hopefully we were going to be in this moment. And now we’re here.
“This is a chance to get it right. This is a chance, an opportunity, for us to flip that pain into some joy.”
Clemson was the first college to offer Watson a scholarship, enthusiastically doing so before his sophomore season at Gainesville. He publicly committed to the Tigers shortly after that season.
Watson has won 31 of 34 games as Clemson’s starting quarterback. He has led the Tigers to back-to-back ACC championships. He passed for 4,104 yards in the 2015 season and 4,173 yards so far this season. He ran for 1,105 yards in 2015 and 586 this season.
“This kid is a brilliant quarterback, brilliant,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said over the weekend.
“Deshaun Watson is probably the most dynamic player in college football — maybe the best player in college football relative to what he does for his team,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said.
Watson graduated with a degree in communications on Dec. 15, fulfilling his plan to do so in three years before moving on to the NFL. That leaves one thing left for him to accomplish as a collegian.
“We’ve done so much over the past three years: ACC championships, bowl wins, road wins, home wins,” he said. “But this is pretty much the final thing we haven’t done: Be the national champion.”
The final hurdle is a big one. Alabama has won 26 consecutive games, dating to September 2015, and is seeking its fifth national championship in eight seasons. Bama enters Monday’s game ranked No. 1 nationally in both total defense and scoring defense. It has allowed one touchdown or less in nine games this season.
“They’re on the top of the peak, and they’re the standard,” Watson said. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best.”
Against Alabama, Clemson might need Watson to clean up the only blemish on his splendid stat sheet: 17 interceptions thrown this season. Alabama’s defense has scored 11 touchdowns on opponent turnovers, six on interception returns and five on fumble returns.
“We’ve got to find a way to not let them score anywhere but on offense,” Swinney said. “Don’t let them score on special teams and defense, because that’s been an incredible recipe for them.”
Watson has one year of eligibility remaining, but Swinney announced in November that his quarterback will enter the 2017 NFL draft. For Watson, Monday’s game is both the sequel to last year’s national title game and the finale.
“Whatever I can do to get the ‘W,’ that’s all I’m focused on,” Watson said. “I can top the numbers I did last year and still lose, still be a loser. So at the end of the day I just want to get the win. If I throw for 100 yards and we win, I’m happy.”
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