True freshman running back Demarkcus Bowman is going through his first fall camp at Clemson after enrolling this summer, and through the first several practices, the former five-star prospect looks precisely like the player the Tigers thought they were getting when he signed with the program back in December.

“Demarkcus is as advertised running the football,” offensive coordinator Tony Elliott told reporters via Zoom on Tuesday evening. “He’s got the juice to his legs. He can really, really go.”

As good as he has looked in the run game, Bowman is facing a learning curve as far as acclimating himself to Clemson’s no-huddle, up-tempo offense, considering he played in a very different system at Lakeland (Fla.) High School.

“The big thing for Demarkcus is, if you go back and you watch him in high school and you understand the program that he came from, it’s a totally different philosophy,” Elliott said. “They were huddle, slow paced, quarterback ran to the sideline. So, the biggest challenge for him right now is getting adjusted to the communication of the play call. But he understands football. He’s got a great understanding of football.”

Clemson practiced in shorts for the first couple days of camp and is just starting to pad up, so Elliott says he will be able to better assess how Bowman looks from a pass protection standpoint once the Tigers get further into their offensive install.

Bowman’s tremendous talent is obvious, and he has a good football IQ, so the main focus for Elliott is getting him up to speed on the ins and outs of the offense.

“Right now, watching him run around, he’s everything as advertised in terms of his speed and his natural ability to run,” Elliott said. “Now it’s just a function of me doing my best coaching job of helping him understand the terminology, the language, because I know he understands football. Once he knows what the protection call means, he’ll understand how the protection is called. But when you’re putting in two and three different protections a practice, and he’s trying to figure out how to communicate from a (no-huddle) process as opposed to a huddle process, it’s a little bit of a challenge.”

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