How Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant went from question mark to exclamation point

When everyone else around Clemson’s football program was minimizing the importance of being voted No. 1 this week, quarterback Kelly Bryant took a different spin.

“About time!” Bryant said, of the 11-1 Tigers reaching the top of the AP poll.

You want that in a quarterback: Confident, maybe a touch cocky. Expecting the best, but prepared for adversity. Not shrinking from the big moment.

“About time” kind of sums up Bryant’s season. The 6-4 junior from Anderson County, S.C., patiently backed up Deshaun Watson, the now-Houston Texans quarterback who led the Tigers to the national championship. He was challenged in the spring and in fall camp by highly rated freshmen.

And he won the job, when many Clemson fans saw him as more-or-less a place-holder.

Now his completion percentage, 66.4, is right there with Watson’s last season. The record is also the same, entering Saturday night’s ACC Championship Game against the seventh-ranked Miami Hurricanes at Bank of America Stadium.

Is Bryant the same guy as Watson? No, and no one portrays him that way. But he has filled the massive responsibility of following Watson with efficiency and confidence. He has thrown for 2,426 yards and 12 touchdowns. He has run for 639 yards and 10 touchdowns.

Perhaps Bryant’s value this season can best be illustrated by what happened in his absence. Because of an ankle injury and then a concussion, he was limited to 29 snaps at Syracuse on Oct. 13. The Tigers were upset 27-24 by a Syracuse team that went 0-5 the rest of the season.

Bryant isn’t close to the best quarterback in the ACC. Louisville’s Lamar Jackson, the 2016 Heisman Trophy-winner, repeated as the conference’s Player of the Year. Wake Forest’s John Wolford was a prolific passer, with a 25-to-6 touchdown-to-interception ratio.

But Bryant – playing on a team with great carryover on defense but which lost an abundance of offensive talent – was right for this situation.

“Kelly was the big question mark, and he’s done pretty good,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney understated Tuesday. “I said to (at the outset of the season), ‘I don’t know. We’ll find out.’ I’d seen it in practice, but I didn’t know. He earned the opportunity to be the guy, but you can’t just earn that in practice. You’ve got to earn that on game day, too.”

The Auburn test

Swinney saw Bryant’s poise in a high school game against Swinney’s son. Or rather, he didn’t see it; he had to hear about it.

Swinney got up to leave with his son’s team up a touchdown and 34 seconds remaining. With Swinney headed to his car, Bryant drove his team the length of the field in that remaining half minute.

Watson’s presence didn’t deter Bryant from signing with Clemson. When Bryant’s chance came last spring, he initially pressed, leading Swinney to think he was trying to live up to Watson’s legacy.

“I didn’t recruit him to be Deshaun,” Swinney said. “I recruited him to be Kelly Bryant.

Bryant excelled the first game of the season, completing 16 of 21 passes in a 56-3 victory over Kent State. But it was Kent State – pretty much a scrimmage, except there were 80,000-some fans at Death Valley to celebrate the reigning national champions.

The next game was very different: A matchup with then-No. 13 Auburn, a team that later in the season beat Georgia and Alabama in weeks when each of those teams was considered college football’s best.

Clemson beat Auburn 14-6. Bryant completed 19 of 29 passes, and ran for both of the Tigers’ touchdowns (for 3 and 27 yards).

Jeff Scott, Clemson’s co-offensive coordinator, said that was the “we’ve got something here” day: When doubts about Bryant’s rise as the starting quarterback were answered.

“It was, ‘Auburn’s got an unbelievable defense! How’s he going to handle that? Is he going to be able to make the plays that you have to make in a competitive game like that?’” Swinney recalled. “He made some big-time throws in that Auburn game.

“Because of that, his confidence really started to emerge. Remember, he’s a new player (as a starter). A veteran guy, but a new player. There is no better teacher than experience and there’s nothing better than a good experience to build your confidence. That’s what came from the Auburn game: (Him saying), ‘Hey, I can do this.’”

As confident as Bryant naturally is, he needed to experience an opponent such as Auburn (a contender, like Clemson, for the four-team College Football Playoffs) to reinforce he was ready for this.

“That was a big moment for me; to see it all come together as an offense,” Bryant said.

“And then, to sit back and watch the film and say, ‘I did that. I can overcome this. I know what I can do, so let’s go showcase it every Saturday.’”

Refinement

Bryant isn’t as dynamic a passer as Watson – few college football quarterbacks are – but he might be a slightly better runner. With each new test – Clemson won road games at Louisville, Virginia Tech and N.C. State, each ranked at the time – Bryant explored more options.

Wide receiver Hunter Renfrow, who caught the winning touchdown pass in the national championship game, said the biggest difference he sees in Bryant is “downfield eyes.” Bryant no longer defaults to tucking away the ball and running during a scramble.

“That was something Deshaun was really good at,” Renfrow said. “It’s good to scramble and not throw it sometimes, but he’s having more throws downfield.”

Bryant recognizes the more he keeps defenses guessing in broken-play situations, the better the offense becomes.

“Of course, when the opportunity presents, I want to make plays with my legs,” Bryant said. “But, for me, it’s not (always) when I get outside, looking for a lane to run. It’s keeping my eyes downfield.”

The stakes rise considerably now. The Clemson-Miami game looks like a de facto play-in game for the four-team playoff field. Bryant was there last season in the run to the title. But the view from the sideline is very different.

“Kelly ain’t played in no ACC Championship Game. Kelly hasn’t played in a national championship game. Kelly hasn’t played a lick” in the postseason, Swinney said.

Maybe Bryant should respond to that as he did regarding the AP poll:

“About time.”

This story was originally published December 1, 2017 at 12:40 PM with the headline "How Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant went from question mark to exclamation point."