CLEMSON – Clemson fans got their first look at Tait Reynolds – the 19-year-old college student, separate from an anonymous paw-printed helmet and orange jersey– right as the quarterback emerged from a Cajun-seasoned buzzsaw.

As faint zydeco music reverberated through LSU’s Tiger Stadium and venue workers plucked up rain-laden tin bottles – discarded souvenirs from the Bayou Bengals’ 41-point thrashing of Dabo Swinney’s Tigers. Reynolds strolled out of a damp visitors’ locker room to meet with Clemson media members for the first time.

Accustomed to the West Coast’s moderate dry heat, the Queen Creek, Ariz., native played his first collegiate snaps in 92-percent Baton Rouge humidity, a rare strain of late-summer sultriness that takes your breath away without offering an apology. 

Postgame, the unforgiving fishbowl of college football media perception was hardly any cooler.

As expected, Reynolds was peppered with questions about how the once-mighty Clemson Tigers, less than eight years removed from their last National Championship, struggled to do as much as pick up a first down in the blowout loss.

“We struggled, it happened,” Reynolds said, sporting his pregame suit, an antiquated relic from life before being thrust into the public eye. “We played the game, and guess what? I think it’s a great opportunity to bounce back from a little adversity here and have a great week next week.”

As he spoke, brazen light from LSU’s neon sign, reading “Welcome to Death Valley” shone down on the signal-caller.

The jaundiced sign had a point, albeit an ironic one.

It had been a brutal night for Reynolds’ welcome to college football.

Not only was the freshman signal-caller and his band of orange-clad underdogs crashing a wedding reception for LSU and its new head coach, Lane Kiffin, Clemson was also the untimely victim of a catharsis that could only follow an offseason plagued by extracurricular novellas.

Reynolds, second on the depth chart, did what he could, given the circumstances of trotting in to steer a team with a 28-point deficit in the second quarter.

In four drives, he completed four of his six pass attempts for 22 yards. He valiantly showcased potential as a 1920s-style escape artist, dodging top-rated LSU defenders, but was ultimately sacked three times.

Later, Reynolds concluded his interview and quietly walked back into a somber locker room filled with players and coaches that somehow had to regroup and play Georgia Southern in seven days, or six, depending on how you count weather delays that elongate a loss into the wee hours of Sunday morning. 

Ten days later, Reynolds stood in front of media members again. This time, he was freshly minted as Clemson’s starting quarterback for its upcoming ACC-season opener against North Carolina. 

Swinney’s decision to hand Reynolds the offense’s coveted keys came after his performance in an eventual 22-7 win over Georgia Southern. In the victory, Reynolds checked in for the Tigers’ fourth possession of the game. With starter Christopher Vizzina injured, the rookie never subbed out again.

He completed 59 percent of his passes for 178 yards, rushing for an additional 38 yards. Sandwiched between a fumble and some other mental mistakes, Reynolds flashed glimpses of greatness — dropping in a few perfect passes on the move with laser-pointer accuracy.

“(Reynolds) made some off schedule plays, which is a gift of his,” Swinney said after the game. “I mean he’s going to be a problem as he continues to play. He’s going to be a really, really good player. But we got a lot of work to do. We got to have a big week and we’ll go from there.” 

FAST FORWARD TO WEDNESDAY

The Tigers’ new starter approached the dais in Clemson’s Smart Family Media Center, armed with the confidence of his head coach and a gray shirt reading “Best is the Standard,” a motto Swinney created in 2008, his interim season as Clemson’s head coach and the first full year of Reynolds’ life.

Reynolds scanned the room, holding onto the podium as Clemson Football’s Communications Director Ross Taylor invited reporters to fire away with questions. There was a pause, pregnant with the weight of queries too big to tackle in a 12-minute interview.

Would the 6-foot-2, former baseball star be one to reinvigorate the hopes of Clemson fans wistfully rewatching Trevor Lawrence highlights on repeat? Would he be the “vocal leader” for which offensive coordinator Chad Morris had clamored a few minutes earlier? 

Who is Tait Reynolds, anyway? 

Well, just ask his dad, Paul.

“(Tait) is a kind of kid that was not afraid of work and not afraid to put the time in and help others around him and encourage them too,” Paul Reynolds told The Clemson Insider. “Probably, that’s the main thing. He’s got a long way to go and a lot of things to learn, but knowing Tate, he’ll learn them.”

Paul Reynolds, a former minor league slugger in the Colorado Rockies and Philadelphia Phillies organizations and later a hard-nosed Arizona State linebacker, has no reason to question his son’s ability to learn from adversity.

In his 19 years, Tait, who balances a handful of roles–brother, son, quarterback and shortstop–on any given day, has been shaped by life lessons, including some that even permeated his worldview through osmosis.

Without a doubt, Paul said, Tait learned the art of competition, as well as his acumen for evading larger competitors, from his two big brothers, Porter and Trey, both current Division I linebackers. His younger sister Emma, who will soon head to South America to play for Team USA’s Under-18 softball team, never took it easy on her brothers, either.

“She gets after me, too, man,” Reynolds said Wednesday, laughing. “Sometimes I come home, I’m like, gosh, I can’t get a break, you know?”

The competition in the Reynolds home played out in at-home wiffleball, wrestling and basketball wars, and required a yearly appointment to patch up a collection of mysterious holes bored into a worn-down basement wall.

“I think they were wrestling down there one time, and someone went through the whole wall,” Paul said with a laugh. “My wife was pretty upset at the time.”

LEARNING FROM BIG SIS

Maybe the biggest lesson Reynolds learned from a sibling, though, came outside hallowed basement or weight room battles. Instead, it came from his older sister Jessica, or “Jessie,” the second in line of a half-dozen athletes bearing the Reynolds surname. 

Unlike the basement wars, this lesson was far quieter– and required fewer construction bills.

According to her father, Jessica suffered a small stroke before birth, leaving her paralyzed on the left side. Despite lacking any feeling in her left hand or leg as a child, the now-25-year-old spent years working to master minute tasks that others might take for granted.

Over time, she learned to walk. To jump. To play the piano.

After years of hard work and some “outside-the-box” exercises with her dad, Jessica went on to run cross country in college. 

Her younger brother watched.

“That helped my kids’ work ethic tremendously,” Paul said. “Just tremendously. They saw Jessie working through that, and yeah, it really did help my kids.”

Jessica was not the only Reynolds that Tait learned a lesson from. Some lessons, though, reached him secondhand, passed down from his father’s experiences years before he was even born.

At Arizona State in the late 1990s, Paul manned the Sun Devils’ defense alongside Pat Tillman, the All-American linebacker who later left his budding NFL career to serve in the Army following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. 

Tillman, a groomsman in Paul’s wedding, was killed in action in 2004. His loyalty lives on in the stories Paul passes to his children.

“Well, the number one thing about Pat is his loyalty,” the elder Reynolds said. “It was just unbelievable, and he was smart. But his loyalty to me, I always bring this up, but his girlfriend at the time, Marie, he was always loyal to her, loyal to his teammates, I mean, you could kind of see the pattern was going on. Stayed loyal to the Cardinals, stayed loyal to Arizona State.

“We’ve definitely had those conversations before about the example Pat set for me, and I try to carry them over to my kids too, just the loyalty part and working hard,” he added.

STAYING LOYAL

Tait got a chance to put that lesson into practice during his recruitment process, pushing back other visits after setting foot in an orange-tinted football palace in Upstate South Carolina, despite having offers far closer to home.

“Dad, I want to come here,” Reynolds told his father on his visit to Clemson.

For nearly two years, he never wavered.

When Reynolds enrolled at Clemson last January, he packed a figurative deck of football cards that represent the people and traits dearest to him – his brothers’ competitiveness, Jessica’s work ethic, Tillman’s loyalty. None of those lessons were fashioned on any hot Arizona football field. Still, they followed him all the way to Memorial Stadium.

In six months of knowing Reynolds, offensive coordinator Chad Morris has already dissected some of the innermost values of his rookie quarterback. More importantly, he has seen them in-play.

“Because (Reynolds is) raised in a family where all his brothers and sisters are all athletes and played, all he knows is that this is what we do,” Morris said. “And so I do think that is going to provide a spark in some areas that need it.”

When Reynolds takes the field for his first collegiate start against Bill Belichick’s North Carolina team on Saturday, he will wear the same uniform as 104 other Tigers, sporting the same number as last season’s starting signal-caller.

With him, though, he will carry all of the individuals who have prepared him for this moment.

Together, they make up Tait Reynolds, starting quarterback for the Clemson Tigers.