The NFL Draft is many things to many people.
It’s the beginning of illustrious careers. It’s the end of lifelong pursuits. It’s both a catapult to a grander stage and a bulldozer crushing dreams.
The draft is ruthless and redemptive, focused and frenzied, insulating and isolating. It is a dangerous game with impactful outcomes at every possible point on the emotional spectrum.
Not all of these things come alive for each person fortunate enough to be included in this process. Perspective limits the characteristics that come to life in each circumstance.
For a hometown hero who has spent virtually his entire football life inside a five-mile radius, the 2016 NFL Draft promises to be revolutionary. It is a trip to the pinnacle for a boy-turned-man molded by tragedy and refined in its shadow. It will be a chance for associated memories to turn from sorrow into joy, for a better kind of life change to replace the heartbreak linked with this jumping-off point for so long.
Shaq Lawson’s pathway to the NFL never took him far away, but it was anything but a straight shot. With the help of a community watching him every step of the way, the first-round hopeful has reached a climax that both marks where he’s been and points the way forward into a promising professional career.
Where it all began
Growing up in Central, S.C. can be both a blessing and a curse. Central is a small town that thrived decades ago as a stop between Charlotte and Atlanta on the railroad. If Clemson had a suburb, this would be it, as sprawl from the growing university infiltrates the quiet, quaint community.
Athletically, Central and Clemson are joined at the hip. The athletic departments work together to provide youth sports to children in the communities. Although the front of the rec football jerseys read “CENTRAL”, the influence of Clemson football is obvious—even in the nickname, “Tigers”.
That’s where the curse comes in. Expectations are high, even for kids, because of the specter that stands a handful of miles up the road.
“You did everything Clemson did as a team,” Lawson said of his youth football experience. “When we had Super Saturday, we ran down the hill like Clemson. We had great coaches that were pushing us and had us ready.”
Lawson can name those coaches, mostly by their nicknames—Alleybat, Big E, Jamie Wilson, Griffin. People in Central know these names. They represent the willingness of a community to mold champions on and off the field. Those Super Saturdays are communal gatherings designed to showcase the natives’ handiwork, with the hope that—one day—those youngsters will grow up to play in college and the pros.
Over the past decade-plus, it’s been a good bet that a future pro will play in one of those games. DeAndre Hopkins, Deshawn Williams, then Lawson—the streams of talent flowed. And that doesn’t include Jarvis Jenkins, who moved into the area during middle school before starring at Clemson and paving the way to the NFL that still runs through the area.
Lawson remembers running the ball as the biggest kid on the field, destroying every helpless little guy in his path. His is a different story from Hopkins, whose play at quarterback elicited the “Nuuuuuuk” chants so frequently heard in Memorial Stadium, or Williams, who was so big he wasn’t allowed to run with the ball.
Running the ball isn’t something Lawson misses very much. In fact, he says he expects plenty of chances to do it at the highest level, but in a very different context than those fall days growing up on Bolick Field.
“I feel like I always get my hands on the ball because I’m trying to strip the ball from the quarterback,” he said. “So I’m going to put my hand on it somehow.”
A standout on the gridiron, Lawson also started playing basketball at a young age. He became a dominant force at Daniel High School as the starting center on a state championship team that boasted Hopkins as its point guard.
His prowess in hoops made Lawson’s athletic goals a bit foggy at times. He knew he wanted to pursue a career in sports. He just couldn’t decide which one. One day, he says he realized there weren’t too many college centers standing 6-foot-3.
“I put my tennis shoes up and picked up my football cleats,” he said.
The youngest—some might say the last—in a string of NFLers to come through Daniel High School, Lawson says he never really looked up to the guys who came just before him. He saw them as a closely connected crew looking to make a mark, rather than a stream of individual talents.
“I wasn’t really ‘watching’ them,” he described. “I feel like we always had the same dream to go chase.”
The truth is that the community at-large probably exalted those players more than they recognized. Lawson’s successes were their successes, and his failures their failures. The time spent helping to raise this soft-spoken mass of innocence into a terror between the lines meant they empathized with him through thick and thin.
That brings us to day two of the 2011 NFL Draft.
A day they will never forget
April 29, 2011 began as a celebration. Family and friends gathered to watch the name “Jarvis Jenkins” scroll across television screens as a second-round draft choice of the Washington Redskins. It was a big day for Clemson, for Daniel High School, for the Central-Clemson community, and for Jarvis’ immediate family.
The crowd included Shaq and his father, Lawrence Lawson, among many others. Lawrence was an outstanding athlete in his own right and was part of the community apparatus that helped mold its prodigies, officiating youth sporting events for years with his twin brother, Ray.
Shaq remembers talking with his dad that day. He remembers discussing “man stuff” with him. He remembers planning to leave with his dad, only to have another attendee at the party convince him to stay.
That choice might have saved his life.
The Chevy Blazer Lawrence was driving collided with another vehicle on the way home. Not wearing a seat belt, Shaq’s father was thrown from the car and pronounced dead at the scene. Rolitha Oglesby, Shaq’s mother, was also in the crash, but survived.
Recalling this incident brings out a different side of Shaq Lawson. His face often sports a toothy grin that reflects the level of joy he feels on a regular basis. He has a child-like ability to soften a room with his presence.
However, Shaq gets quiet when discussing his father. It’s been five years, but he still doesn’t talk about it much—not to media members, not to those closer to him. That experience shook him personally, and the ripple effect infiltrated the surrounding community, which put its collective arm around him during his period of grief.
Lawrence’s passing required Shaq to become the man of the house, something he says his father often challenged him to prepare to do. He was thrust into a leadership role within his family, one of several developments that have better equipped him for the upcoming challenges of handling a budding pro career.
As he prepares to enter the NFL, which will begin with the 2016 NFL Draft on Thursday, Shaq remembers one piece of advice he says he received countless times from his father.
“Be better than him,” Shaq says Lawrence would tell him. “So that’s what I’m doing right now. That’s what I’m playing the game for.”
Clemson defensive end Shaq Lawson (90) sacks Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield (6) in the first quarter of the 2015 CFP Semifinal at the Orange Bowl at Sun Life Stadium. (Photo Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
Making his hometown proud
With the community behind him, Shaq earned a scholarship to Clemson. Before he followed in the footsteps of Jenkins, Williams, and Hopkins before him, though, the highly regarded prospect needed to take the scenic route through Chatham, Va., where he would spend an extra semester at Hargrave Military Academy to complete some coursework. The rigidity of the daily schedule and emphasis on discipline drove Shaq even further into the world of personal responsibility.
“It changed me as a person, as a man,” Lawson said. “It made me a more mature football player.”
Predictably, Shaq excelled on the football field. At least one service dubbed him the top prep school prospect in the country. On trips down for football Saturdays, observers—from both inside and outside the program—remarked about the way the semester at Hargrave helped chisel Lawson’s body. He was ready to hit the ground running in January of 2013, when he came back to star for the hometown college team.
Lawson got to Clemson ready to contribute, but there was a problem. Talented players were already entrenched at defensive end. This made earning playing time an issue.
The cliché narrative here would be that Shaq patiently waited his turn and did what he was told and emerged a better person, but that’s not exactly what happened. Shaq actually beat out Vic Beasley in preseason camp. To hear him tell it, he was solidly atop the depth chart, only to have Dabo Swinney and the coaching staff make a last-minute decision to make Beasley the starter.
The reasons for this were clear at the time. Beasley was older and Shaq was new, and Swinney knew the Tigers would probably need them both. Still, Shaq wasn’t exactly thrilled with this development. He felt he earned a starting spot. He knew he was equipped to deliver at the college level.
During his first two seasons at Clemson, Lawson started only one game, but he made a tremendous impact. He compiled 7.5 sacks and 21 tackles for loss behind Beasley, who was selected eighth overall by the Atlanta Falcons in the 2015 NFL Draft. His departure left Lawson as the favorite to start in 2015, and he did.
If Shaq was an impact player before, he shifted into overdrive as a junior. He took the nation by storm, leading all others with 25.5 tackles for loss and finishing in a tie for fifth in sacks with 12.5—numbers that surpassed his totals from the previous two-year stretch. It was no secret to anyone in the area the stud edge rusher would turn pro at the end of the year, but publicly, he made no proclamations.
The season ended in the College Football Playoff Championship Game, where Lawson learned a lesson he considers one of his most valuable. While the crowd saw Baker Mayfield fall to the turf, Lawson felt the pain in his left knee. He sacked Oklahoma’s quarterback in the Orange Bowl on what would be his final play of the game. Suddenly, the sideline was his home once again, but Lawson became like a student coach as his teammates earned a resounding victory.
“I was giving those guys hints about how to be successful in the game,” he said. “I didn’t enjoy that, I missed the game, but I really enjoyed that I got that experience to see how the game worked.”
That perspective, that knowledge, is lodged in Lawson’s brain. It will help inform him as he proceeds to the next level, yet another instance where an uncertain reality did not deter him.
Attention turns to the draft
After a loss in the national title game to Alabama—Lawson had two sacks in the contest, something he’s pretty matter-of-fact about acknowledging—Shaq’s attentions turned to the draft. As such, his family and community did the same.
When the process began, Lawson was considered a viable selection in the 10-to-20 range of the first round. Scouts saw a mammoth mass of man with the speed to get around the edge and pursue the quarterback while still possessing the strength to hold his ground. He has been out of high school for four seasons, but because he only started 16 times at Clemson, the promise of greater development appears to intrigue teams.
Shaq disagrees with people who try to pigeonhole his fit. 4-3, 3-4, down lineman, standup outside linebacker—in his mind, he can do it all, and he has the film to prove it.
“Half of my sacks at Clemson were standing up, and half of them were on the ground,” he said. “I dropped back into coverage a lot during games.”
The NFL Combine reaffirmed Lawson’s ability. He says he has no regrets about his work on the field in Indianapolis, or at his pro day back at Clemson. Even when the process got a little odd—he says one team asked him who the fourth president was, and he still isn’t sure of the answer (James Madison)—he took it all in stride.
Now, that process includes a mini-takeover of ESPN. Lawson spent a day up in Bristol, Conn. last week, appearing multiple times on “SportsCenter” and on talk shows like “His and Hers”. He says his highlight was meeting people like Steven A. Smith and seeing how different they are when the cameras are off. He also said it was interesting to watch people discuss and debate his merits.
“They were on my side,” he said with a smile. “That was kinda straight.”
The small-town product was on a grander stage. “Everybody in this world—the sports world—watches ESPN,” he says, his voice seeming to acknowledge a piece of his arrival.
Shaq Lawson answers questions during media day at the Phoenix Convention Center prior to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. Lawson has learned to enjoy these moments. It’s in his character to have a positive outlook. (Photo Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports)
A day to celebrate
Shaq Lawson hadn’t been to Chicago until he went for some pre-draft events a couple of weeks ago. He will take in the proceedings from the Auditorium Theatre, far from his home in Central, on Thursday.
On Monday, family and friends got together to celebrate an accomplishment to come. It was a similar gathering to the one five years ago that some of the same people attended for Jarvis—the one that changed Shaq’s life, and the lives of his family members, forever.
The darkness associated with that day will likely be trumped by a new, robust picture of triumph over circumstance, of a community cultivating a champion from the ashes of defeat, of a boy basking in the image of the man he has become.
“I feel ready,” Shaq said. “I’m just taking it a day at a time, just enjoying the moment.”
Shaq has learned to enjoy these moments. It’s in his character to have a positive outlook. Even the most pessimistic person would have a hard time seeing many reasons not to indulge that side of himself given what’s about to come.
When Shaq’s name is called and he strolls to the stage on Thursday night—something Jenkins and Hopkins, both taken in the first two rounds, never had the chance to do—it will be a seismic collision between all of the intersecting narratives that have weaved the web of Shaq’s life to this point.
His upbringing, his play on the field, his tragedy, his triumph, his dream—all will come together for a moment, in that place, a meeting point of providential design. The community will feel it too, the immediate family that gather to celebrate and those who had a hand in his development—the teachers, coaches, volunteers, prayer warriors, and simple fans who cheered him on.
Shaq will likely think of many of them, including his father. It will be hard not to associate him with this day, as history has made it virtually impossible to ignore. Far from dwelling on the pain, Lawson looks forward to reveling in the path he has trod—the one paved by the shared labor of an entire slew of people invested in his ultimate success.
“I’ve just been blessed, man,” Shaq said. “God has a plan for me. I feel like my journey went right how He wanted it to go.”
Shaq uses both the past and future tenses in that quote, a perfect picture of the mountaintop upon which he stands. What has been and what will be branch from this place, where the work of thousands and the hunger of one have created a star.
Lead Photo Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports