Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence thinks the targeting hit against him was a blessing in disguise during his win Saturday over Ohio State.
With the Tigers struggling to gain any traction against the Buckeyes, Lawrence got lit up by a head-to-head hit from Shaun Wade, and he credits it with turning the game around. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
Yes, you read that correctly. Lawrence thinks nearly getting knocked out of the game is what sparked Clemson’s epic comeback.
Lawrence told the media the following Monday, according to ESPN:
It was just, they hit me, and I was worried it was my collarbone for a second because I couldn’t feel it up there around my shoulder and neck, and my arm just went numb. It was just a really bad stinger. And then I got kind of — I was kind of pissed off because I knew they were over there thinking like, ‘All right, we knocked him out.’ They think they had all the momentum, so I was like, ‘All right, I’m just going to pop up, I’m going to run it off.’ And I was pissed, too, because I thought we were punting, and then it turns out they called targeting and we got a chance to go back out there and we finished and scored on that drive. But I was just like, man, from then on, they thought they had knocked me out. I had a different kind of edge when I got up.
I didn’t realize that hit messed up Lawrence that badly. It was obvious at the time that he was in some serious pain, but I didn’t realize part of his body went numb.
That’s pretty scary. It’s never a good thing whenever a player’s body goes numb. That’s usually a really bad sign.
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Luckily, Lawrence bounced back in a big way, and unloaded on the Buckeyes down the stretch to win the game. He picked them apart as the game went on.
I guess we all now know how close he came to missing the rest of the action after that brutal hit.
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Now, we’ll see what Lawrence can do against LSU. I’d recommend the Tigers from Baton Rouge don’t target him because that apparently ends very poorly.