By William Qualkinbush.
Their futures seemed destined to converge in the past.
In the late fall of 2010, Clemson’s football season had gone off the tracks. In the midst of a 6-7 campaign—the worst single year in a dozen—the future looked puzzling for Dabo Swinney and his staff. But within a few weeks, the fortunes of the program took a historic turn with a bit of good recruiting fortune that culminated in Signing Day 2011.
High profile prospects started pledging their allegiances to the Tigers—Mike Bellamy, Charone Peake, Martavis Bryant, Sammy Watkins, and so forth. But arguably the most important transformation within a position group took place on Signing Day, when two blue-chip linebackers signed on the dotted line.
Stephone Anthony was a big, strapping kid from Wadesboro, NC. Clemson was his predicted destination, and he did not disappoint, spurning advances from Florida and North Carolina to give Swinney one five-star signee at linebacker.
Tony Steward was a different specimen altogether. He had similar height and build to Anthony, but his strengths were his explosion and playmaking ability. His family yearned for him to stay in the state of Florida, but his heart was in Clemson. He signed with the Tigers and never looked back.
After that day, when their futures aligned for a moment, their paths diverged once again. Anthony split time with Spencer Shuey at middle linebacker during his freshman and sophomore seasons, then he manned the MIKE slot alongside Shuey in 2013. Along the way, he built up a solid reputation—both in his own locker room and around the country—and is considered one of the nation’s elite linebackers this season.
Meanwhile, Steward largely sat and watched, the victim of a harsh reality of college football: injury.
Multiple knee injuries, even dating back to high school, almost derailed a promising career in Steward’s case. He has yet to crack the top 15 tacklers on the team in any of his three seasons, and last season, he found himself slotted behind a productive Shuey on the depth chart.
In 40 football games since the two of them signed on that February day in 2011, Anthony and Shuey have not started a game side-by-side. But today, between the hedges in Sanford Stadium, their paths will converge for the first time.
“There’s always been that thought in the back of our heads,” Anthony said of the tandem playing together one day. “We just want to come to work every day and compete and see what happens.”
This day will be especially rewarding for Steward, who many labeled as a bust given his lack of success at the collegiate level. He says he has heard the criticism but shrugs it off as irrelevant to his process.
“A lot of people don’t know what goes into it, so they’re looking at it from the outside in,” he said. “They’re just wondering what’s going on, what happened.”
Defensive coordinator Brent Venables has spent an offseason working with Anthony and Steward together in his starting lineup. He says he likes what he sees, but he also cautions fans to wait and see what the duo can do on the field in a game situation as partners.
“You like to get to games, and then it really develops,” Venables said. “But they have a good trust, a good chemistry. They understand each other on the field. I see that starting to develop.”
Almost 43 months ago, Stephone Anthony and Tony Steward aligned themselves with one another in a way that seemed certain to produce explosive results. The results might come still, albeit a few years later than expected.