CLEMSON – Gideon Davidson could have claimed full-time residency in the end zone with the amount of touchdown trips he made at Liberty Christian Academy.

The running back, a Ghana native and Lynchburg, Va., local, scored 126 total touchdowns across his four-year prep career, earning him Gatorade Player of the Year honors and enough scholarship offers to put two basketball teams through college.

His high school career included 701 carries, a 10.53-yard average and two state championships. He was named Rivals’ second-best running back in the 2024 class, and the best player in the state of Virginia.

If you look up statistics for high school running backs in the Old Dominion state, Davidson’s name is intertwined in the record books with former NFL veterans, and he finished his career with the second-most rushing yards in the state’s history.

As a freshman, however, Davidson did not make it to his second home–the end zone–in his 60 carries with the Tigers. As a player with a four-year laundry list of accolades, this was an unprecedented first.

“Really in high school, I never had a season where I didn’t score,” Davidson said. “So, it’s kind of like, not a setback, but just kind of a realization that there is a different reality in high school.”

Last year, for the first time in maybe his entire career, Davidson was not the starting running back on his team. Instead, he was second on the depth chart behind senior Adam Randall, a converted wide receiver who was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens this past April. 

Still, the true freshman rushed for 260 yards and added 93 more through the air when he got his opportunities. He had a career-best 95 total yards on 12 carries and four receptions in a loss to Duke, and rushed for 52 yards against Furman in November. 

Though it was not a bad first season, it was not a great one either. Davidson was determined to make his snaps count, especially when Clemson shelled out its fewest carries as a team since 2004. He did not want to mess up, to miss a block or misunderstand an assignment. Fair, as the Tigers could not afford many errors with an already icy 1-3 start to the season.

“I feel like I was kind of trying to get everything right and not make a mistake instead of just focusing on the things I need to do,” he said. “I feel like this year the game has definitely slowed down and I just have the ability to play free.”

The former near-perfect high school player was searching for football nirvana in year one. But entering year two, he is looking to be just the best version of Gideon Davidson.

“Honestly, just be Gideon,” running backs coach C.J. Spiller said of his advice to the rising sophomore. “You don’t need to go out and try to be anybody else in my room. You just need to go out and just be Gideon and do the things that we ask him to do and just do it at a high level, which I know he will do.

“So that’s the biggest thing I would tell him. Just go out there and be Gideon. Put the horse blinders on. Forget all the other stuff, all the outside stuff, and just focus on what you need to do to be a great football player.”

With a new offensive coordinator in Chad Morris, Davidson and the other running backs have been tasked with learning an entirely new offense, one that is highly run-game oriented.

Now, more than maybe ever, it is time for Davidson to put on Spiller’s aforementioned “horse-blinders.” The good news is, he is working with an entire position group that needs to lack (metaphorical) peripheral vision, and prove themselves as individuals and as a unit this season.

“I would say I’m not by myself,” Davidson said. “Everybody really on this offense is learning it. So, we’re all just trying to teach each other. And being in this leadership role, it’s really given me an opportunity to really learn it well, not slack off and do my own thing. But yeah, I just say, we got a lot of guys to help each other through that.”

Davidson and the rest of Clemson’s running backs will face their first test on Sept. 5, when the Tigers will head down to Baton Rouge, La., to take on LSU in a season-opener in Tiger Stadium.

There would be no better moment or scene for Davidson’s first collegiate touchdown.