No, that’s pretty much it. There wasn’t any reason. It wasn’t some project with a goal. One day we were just like, Alright let’s dig a hole. So that’s what we did. The three of us got some shovels, and we started digging … and digging … and digging … and digging. And the hole got pretty deep!!! Like, it was summer and we were three boys in Fairhope, Alabama with nothing to do — that’s basically a full construction crew, you know? We got super into it. And at some point the hole got so deep that we just kind of decided, like……. OK. To be honest. We should dig all the way to China.
All my life … I’ve just always wanted to be a quarterback. There’s always been something about it, you know? The magnitude of the position. The way that it asks you to confront your own shortcomings. The way that it asks you to lead.
And “the man in the arena” was definitely on my mind last year, after our season ended at Duke the way it did and I started thinking about my future. I have so much love in my heart for Duke — they took a chance on me when so many others wouldn’t. When I came into fall camp as a freshman, I was maybe the sixth-string QB, and I remember thinking to myself, like, Dude it would be so cool if I stepped on the field during a game. Then in Week 7, I got in and handed the ball off a few times. No joke, I was celebrating with my family afterwards like I won the Super Bowl. But eventually I got to start a game (I was terrible), then start some more. We went 3–9 my freshman year … and flipped it to 9–4 my sophomore year. It was really cool.
But my junior year, to be honest, was a disappointment. There were some high highs: I started to get a lot of recognition — all of a sudden people were saying I might be a first-round draft pick, or a Heisman dark horse, stuff like that. And as a team, we had one of the biggest wins in school history, beating No. 9 Clemson in a night game at our place. But there were also some low lows: We played Notre Dame in another huge night game, and I hurt my ankle pretty bad and we lost a heartbreaker. Then three games later we lost to Louisville, and I broke my toe, which took me out for the year. It felt like we had a chance for this special season … and it just didn’t happen. And even aside from getting injured, I won’t lie, a lot of that is on me. I don’t know if it’s because of the success I had as a sophomore, and I just wasn’t mature enough to handle it, or what. But I didn’t make the strides I wanted to as a junior.
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