When South Carolina’s Jadeveon Clowney started this season, expectations seemed big enough for the All-American defensive end. A few injuries later, they can seem bloated. How long of a stretch of diminutive impact on the field, and even complete absence, does it take before the expectations are fully deflated? Well, the nation’s got the needle ready. It’s unfortunate, but they have good reason.
Through the first four games, that All-American, that preseason front-runner for the Heisman, that dreadlocked monster that can flick blockers off in his sleep, Clowney, minutely contributed with—get this—an average of three tackles a game. He’s averaged less than a half a sack a game, half as good as last year.
In three straight wins over unranked teams—Vanderbilt and Kentucky amongst them as fellow SEC teams and combining for 0-5 in conference games—the Gamecocks’ defense has allowed 78 points. They made those first two conference wins look like Arena Football wins.
Ok, something’s not right about this picture. Through a third of the season, Clowney’s already played through sickness, a foot ailment, and now the one he seriously had to consider: a bruised rib. Consideration soon took him off the field and into headlines.
All the talk circulated around what had ever happened to the guy whose plows to the quarterback have been more vicious than a bull’s to a red carpet. Through his hobbling efforts, he just wasn’t the impact he’s been for the past two years.
South Carolinians can be far beyond disgruntled with the idea that Clowney—the anchor of that anchor-thriving defense—is playing it ‘too safe.’ In their arguments pertaining to the topic, probably half of them throughout South Carolina, they’ve probably already used every ‘too safe’ nickname to label this guy: ‘The Parachute’, ‘The Usain Bolt After Hitting a Grounder in Charity Softball’, ‘The Money in a Bank with John Cena as the Bank Teller.’ You get the picture. The media, from print to broadcast, has chimed in.
People have even come to assume Clowney is exaggerating his incapability to play in order to preserve his security as an NFL prospect, likely for this year’s draft, all the while the Gamecocks’ season is put in jeopardy. The more he sits or is limited through games, the deeper into trouble this team’s defense can sink.
Why does everyone have to see him as that bull they love, only with a red Gamecocks symbol on the cape? What he’s doing is protecting himself.
With as many injuries Clowney has been plagued with this month, apprehensiveness with deciding when to step off the field and get taken care of seems just as much as an obstacle as the minor injuries themselves. This has to do with something much greater than sustaining a reputation Clowney’s defense has held the past couple years just to move up in the rankings.
He isn’t even just protecting himself physically. He’s protecting his future. His NFL checks. His family’s future financial life. His life after this year, after football, really. So you can’t blame the guy for wanting to sit through minor injuries and a muscle strain. He’s seen former teammate Marcus Lattimore—once regarded as the top running back in the country—pop his knee out of place, shin leaning the opposite way it should, after a season-ending hit last year.
He’d seen this premier-caliber player, such as himself, hurt physically and, at the time, presumably financially. For Lattimore, this was fresh off knee rehab, too. Turns out he got drafted in the fourth round last NFL Draft and is fully healthy, no damage done in any aspect. The grimacing thought of suffering from a more major injury, like Lattimore’s was, and not returning to NFL status the way Lattimore miraculously did is always going to inevitably be in the back of Clowney’s head—of anybody’s head—moving forward.
And so it led the Heisman-contending defensive end to the decision that took the media and knocked a new topic to talk about right at them, perhaps with shock-factor as great in degree as he delivers to quarterbacks. Everyone talked, Clowney healed.
Though still not up to par, he got a chance to play this past week against Arkansas, a team still winless in the conference. The Gamecocks flew past them, 52-7, Clowney adding to the defensive effort with a tackle. Singular.
“I was there, helping my team out, cheering them on,” Clowney said after the game, elated from his team’s success. “It was good for us to come out here and do what we had to do today.”
“[Jadeveon] really added a spark to our defense,” South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said after the win. “He was fired up. He was even giving little pep talks in the locker room before the game. That was good to see.”
If the man sits, believe it’s for the greater cause. If he plays and contributes to the victory, dog on it, let’s leave him be. He hurried the quarterback a few times, and he’s doing all he can. The guy isn’t 100 percent healthy, got the break he needed early on, and will only improve from here.
Here’s the best news of it all: multiple NFL executives have echoed themselves, all saying that Clowney’s body being hurt will have no part in his draft stock becoming hurt.
Cue the flush of relief.
Who said Jadeveon couldn’t protect his long-term future and still find ways to help protect his team’s short-term future? Looks like he’s doing both.