High school is always an important time in life, and although I wouldn’t necessarily label my high school years as the most enjoyable, they were certainly memorable.
During those years I did a lot of learning in classrooms, on the football field, and at home, and that learning helped me understand that success is all about preparation. If you want to succeed, you have to know what you want to achieve and put in the work ahead of time to get there. I started to grasp this lesson even before I had my first day as a high school student.
I spent the summer before my freshman year of high school working as a ball boy at the Atlanta Falcons’ practice facility, which was just ten minutes away from my home. I got the job through the Boys & Girls Club in Gainesville. At my mom’s encouragement, I’d begun attending the Boys & Girls Club when I was seven. In addition to sports, I really enjoyed the Passport to Manhood program that allowed me and my friends to discuss our goals and challenges in an open and frank manner.
That summer I was one of a few high school students chosen to take part in the ball boy program, which was started by Falcons owner Arthur Blank. As a ball boy, I picked up footballs during practice, took care of the team’s equipment, and folded towels. Anything that the players needed, we ball boys took care of.
It was an incredible experience, and being a ball boy helped me see up close what was possible for my future if I remained determined and focused on my goals.
It didn’t hurt that the job had some surprising financial benefits. One time cornerback Asante Samuel forgot his mouthpiece in the locker room and asked me to get it for him. When I walked by his locker after practice, he pulled out this Louis Vuitton bag and gave me a $1,000 tip—just for getting his mouthpiece. He didn’t have to give me anything, but he did. It was a real lesson on how to treat others and the importance of generosity, but particularly on showing generosity to those who will genuinely appreciate the spirit behind it.
BEING A BALL BOY HELPED ME SEE UP CLOSE WHAT WAS POSSIBLE FOR MY FUTURE IF I REMAINED DETERMINED AND FOCUSED ON MY GOALS.
I got to see how the players worked together as a team and the unity and bonding that were important parts of that. I was also lucky enough to become close with several of the players. I played catch with wide receiver Julio Jones and quarterback Matt Ryan. Although it was an informal thing, I took the time to watch these two consummate pros while we played. I noted the various angles that Matt used when throwing the ball and the position of his arm. I studied Julio and how he watched every single ball come into his hands. Even in the most casual game of catch, he was working on a consistent, reliable style of catching.
On a more organized level, the team had me take part by throwing to some of the wide receivers as part of their drills. I hit most every receiver squarely between the numbers, but I would really tense up when throwing to the starters. My throws to them betrayed the nerves I felt.
That was more than enough reason for some of the players to start giving me a hard time. Wide receiver Roddy White kidded me about being the star young quarterback who had a habit of throwing balls into the ground.
“How you supposed to be that good and you throwing bad balls?” Roddy asked me.
“You guys make me nervous,” I replied with complete honesty.
Roddy looked at me in surprise. “Nervous? We’re at practice.”
“It’s different throwing to high school players and throwing to you guys,” I answered. With that, Roddy smiled ever so slightly. He could see how a kid could be intimated by being around gifted professionals. He let up on his ribbing, but only just a little bit.
Even though the players gave me a hard time for tightening up, I did well enough that I was asked back by the Falcons each year I was in high school. But the players continued to get on to me, although in an obviously friendly way.
Sometimes the guys would rib me about how quiet I was. Roddy once asked me, “If you never talk, how are people supposed to know who you are?”
“I’m just out here on the grind,” I replied immediately.
Even though I was just one of a number of ball boys, Roddy made me feel like part of the team. He encouraged a feeling of belonging, and I appreciated it.
This was a lesson in leadership. Roddy clearly understood the importance of inclusion, of making certain that everyone associated with the team felt like they were a part of something bigger. Great leaders are like that. They never want others to feel as though they don’t belong. If that’s the case, a leader works to address that.
My ball boy experience helped prepare me for what was to come by giving me a glimpse of what the life of an NFL player was like. I knew that I wanted to play in the NFL, and once I knew what I was striving for, I could take the steps needed to get there.
MY BALL BOY EXPERIENCE HELPED PREPARE ME FOR WHAT WAS TO COME BY GIVING ME A GLIMPSE OF WHAT THE LIFE OF AN NFL PLAYER WAS LIKE.
That’s why I took every opportunity to pay close attention to the details and specifics of practice. I studied various players’ routines—when they arrived for practice, what regimen they followed, how their level of focus could shift depending on what they were working on each day. I also began to notice how certain players approached practice differently than others. They’d show up early, and they continued working on certain skills long after others had headed out the door. Their level of commitment and preparation truly stood out.
Athletics continued to fill much of my time once I became a student at Gainesville High School. I made the football team as a quarterback—luckily for me, not just any quarterback. My work ethic, attitude, and performance (I completed twenty-two out of twenty-five passes during my very first scrimmage) so impressed head coach Bruce Miller that he chose me as the starter, beating out a junior with two years’ experience. At just fourteen years old, I was only the third freshman quarterback Coach Miller had ever started. All that play on the streets and fields of Gainesville was starting to pay off. I was humbled, but being as young as I was, also a bit intimidated.
My role as starting quarterback allowed me to pursue what was fast becoming an outright love of learning. I studied and prepared for every game just as much as I studied and prepared for my classes. I have always been like this. Childhood friends still recall how I would map out plays when we were playing football. I’d grab a stick and outline passing routes—down here ten feet, then cut left, that sort of thing. Many of my friends would just shake their heads in bewilderment as they tried to follow my ideas. If nothing else, my love of preparation taught me an early lesson about the value of clear communication for everyone involved.
MY ROLE AS STARTING QUARTERBACK ALLOWED ME TO PURSUE WHAT WAS FAST BECOMING AN OUTRIGHT LOVE OF LEARNING. I STUDIED AND PREPARED FOR EVERY GAME JUST AS MUCH AS I STUDIED AND PREPARED FOR MY CLASSES.
Fortunately, Coach Miller’s confidence in me was justified. Our team had one of the best records in its history that year, with ten wins and just two losses. I also had a solid season, throwing for more than 2,000 yards with seventeen touchdown passes and rushing for an additional 569 yards. I also scored five touchdowns on the ground. In fact, my season was so solid that several Division 1 college football programs began to express an interest in me.
During my freshman season, the upperclassmen on the team started calling me “Rookie.” At first they were just trying to give me a hard time, but the nickname eventually stuck as their way of telling me that I belonged. I was one of them—a realization that made me work harder to live up to their confidence. Like Roddy White of the Atlanta Falcons, they knew how essential it was to foster a sense of team in which nobody was left out or made to feel less important.
My education continued off the field as well. One day during my freshman year, I found a twenty-dollar bill lying on the ground outside of the high school. Unsure what to do, I brought the money to Coach Miller. He stuffed the bill into his desk drawer. A few weeks later, as nobody else had claimed it, Coach said the money was mine. Even as I put the money in my pocket, I couldn’t help but think of the person who had lost that twenty dollars. I was happy to have the extra cash but felt badly for the person whose loss was my gain. I knew I would never want to benefit at someone else’s expense.
At the beginning of my sophomore year, I met a man who literally changed my life—Michael Perry, the team’s recently hired quarterbacks coach.
Having watched me my freshman year, Coach Perry said he had all the confidence in the world about my talent. What I needed was a work ethic every bit as strong. He made me understand that talent without an accompanying work ethic is only half the formula for success—and one without the other can only compromise your efforts.
As I like to say, Coach Perry’s secret was that he didn’t have a secret, some magical, mystical methodology to take ability and mold it into all that it could be. He just made me work my butt off. Simple as that. And the payoff went far beyond winning on the football field.
TALENT WITHOUT AN ACCOMPANYING WORK ETHIC IS ONLY HALF THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS—AND ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER CAN ONLY COMPROMISE YOUR EFFORTS.
Coach Perry was the first to help me see that success of any kind is the result of focus, effort, and, especially, exhaustive preparation. His ability to convey that message to me and other teenagers was particularly remarkable. If you’re coaching eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds, the value of intensive study and preparation can easily fall on deaf ears. To Coach’s credit, he was able to impress on us not only the value of preparation in terms of football but that those habits would benefit us for the rest of our lives. That’s a big idea for teens to get their heads around, but Coach got it across to us.
To that end, Coach Perry started by giving me an enormous notebook of plays and defensive schemes. He instructed me to commit every detail to memory. I spent hours studying that book, making sure I absorbed everything it could teach me.
Then there was film work. That’s an element of preparation I’ve come to realize is as important as any in a player’s development. For those of you who have never done it, film work is essentially sitting in front of a screen and watching a video of a game, reviewing every play, often in slow motion, over and over. You look for what you did right and what you can improve on. You also watch other players, studying the workings of teams you’re going to be up against and trying to figure out what plays they might try to use against you.
For me, film work is beneficial on so many levels. You can review a particular play over and over until you learn as much as you can. On the football field, things happen way too fast for that kind of study or reflection to be possible.
I believe film study is what separates the good players from the great ones. That’s because, to be honest, film work can be pure drudgery. It’s boring and repetitive. For athletes used to having their bodies in motion, sitting and staring at a screen for hours on end is borderline torture. Although technologies such as laptops and tablets make the process go faster, for lots of players, film study is a chore, pure and simple. They’d rather be playing, not watching.
I take a different approach. For me, film study represents an enormous opportunity to improve, to take what time I need to break down the specifics of my play and that of others. It appeals to the student in me; film work makes you that much more prepared when the time comes to perform.
I BELIEVE FILM STUDY IS WHAT SEPARATES THE GOOD PLAYERS FROM THE GREAT ONES.
It also gets back to a point I raised earlier about the importance of balancing athletics with classroom work. As I mentioned, athletes who aren’t students often fail to reach their full potential as players and people. Film study lets an athlete leverage the student inside to improve physical and mental performance.
Although every player approaches film study differently, I’ve always tried to cover certain factors, including:
Reading coverage: I look to see what sort of defense cover schemes other teams are running so I know what routes my receivers should be running and where I should be throwing the ball.
Understanding defensive fronts: How the opposing defense lines up determines blocking responsibilities.
Identifying blitzes: I look for signs and tendencies of a blitz where the defense commits additional players to rushing the quarterback. Receivers may run “hot” or short routes if a blitz occurs; alternatively, running backs may have to stay in the backfield to strengthen pass protection.
Pinpointing and correcting mistakes: Film lets you watch when you mess up and discover what you can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
How many hours have I spent looking at film? Frankly, I’ve lost count. The more film time I put in, the better prepared I am. I don’t think there’s even such a thing as too much film time. When it comes to time spent in the film room, I stopped looking at my watch long ago. Its value goes way beyond minutes and seconds spent.
Studying film has helped me improve my own play, and it has given me the opportunity to study my teammates’ play as well. That allows me the chance to offer feedback and suggestions so our entire team can improve.
My time with Coach Perry was grueling at first. I would arrive at school at 7:00 a.m. Coach Perry and I would have sausage biscuit sandwiches for breakfast, courtesy of the nearby Longstreet Cafe, then turn on the projector for a solid two hours. Head coach Miller started calling me a “film hound,” someone who goes hunting for new film, who can’t get enough of it. I studied great college quarterbacks as well as NFL icons like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Watching them perform over and over, I broke down their ability to do what they did and tried my best to make it work for me as well.
This went on both during the school year and over summer break, for four or sometimes five days a week. That was our routine, and it never varied. When school was in session, I’d head off to a full day of classes after our film study. Later on I’d go to Coach Perry’s home, where he would quiz me on everything from offensive strategies to audibles to defensive formations. Then it was back home to do my schoolwork and prepare for the next day.
When I met Coach Perry, I was a football player. He turned me into a quarterback, a real student of the game who not only executes on the field but is capable of being involved in play calling and overall strategy. He helped me become a more complete player, both physically and mentally.
Coach Perry was more than just a coach to me. He made sure I focused on my schoolwork, that athletics never got in the way of academic performance. He constantly asked me if I was getting my homework done and how my grades were. He wanted to know which subjects I enjoyed the most and which ones I found more challenging. Like others had, he strengthened the bond between my schoolwork and athletics.
WHEN I MET COACH PERRY, I WAS A FOOTBALL PLAYER. HE TURNED ME INTO A QUARTERBACK.
He also helped me move closer to God. He taught me what it meant to be a true man, a person of character and humility. He taught me the value of putting others before yourself. He was a father figure to me, something I’d never had growing up.
Happily, Coach Perry was not the only person I looked to as a father figure. It was about this time that I met Jack Waldrip. A local real estate broker, Jack was heavily involved in the local Boys & Girls Club.
The outreach coordinator at the club kept trying to convince Jack that two teenagers would benefit from meeting and getting to know him. Jack, a sixty-some-year-old white man who had just undergone bypass surgery, was doubtful he would connect with two young African American boys. Since we were football players, Jack assumed that we might communicate better with someone younger, someone perhaps a bit closer to the game. But the people at the Boys & Girls Club as well as Jack’s wife, Violet, continued to urge him to give the introduction a try.
Finally, Jack said okay. And, fortunately for me, I was one of those two young boys.
One day my friend Fred Payne, a defensive player who was outgoing and always talking, and I pulled in to Jack’s driveway.
Of course, Fred started talking with Jack almost immediately while I hung in the background, quiet and shy as always. Eventually, though, Jack introduced himself, shook my hand, and we began talking.
We bonded almost instantly.
Jack has been a major force in my life ever since. We’ve spent a lot of Christmases together. He gave me lifts to the airport. He helped me celebrate major victories in my life and consoled me during times of trial. Jack even went so far as to name his dog Watson. What greater honor could a young man ask for?
The support of both of these men helped prepare me mentally and emotionally for the road ahead. At the end of my freshman year of high school, the legendary Coach Dabo Swinney at Clemson University reached out to me. He said he had known of me for the better part of a year and had come to appreciate my talent as well as my coachability. He then offered me a full scholarship to Clemson. I knew that this meant getting a college education without having to go into debt or needing my mom to pay a dime toward my degree, not to mention a genuine shot at making it to the NFL.
Naturally, I had heard of Coach Swinney well before this. He had been at Clemson since 2003, trying to boost a program in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). In fact, that was one of the most intriguing parts of his interest in me—I wanted to join a team that was looking to rise amid grueling competition, not just some powerhouse comfortably atop a so-so conference. The challenge appealed to me, as did the man trying to make it all happen.
His was an amazing and flattering offer. It was many things: thrilling, humbling, and a bit overwhelming. But what really won me over to Clemson was a promise from Coach Swinney. If I agreed to attend Clemson, he said, he would not recruit a quarterback the following year. His plan was to build the program around me.
At first I was a bit skeptical. Right, I told myself, I’m sure I’m going to hear the same line from every coach hoping to lure me to his school. They were all full of great promises.
I WANTED TO JOIN A TEAM THAT WAS LOOKING TO RISE AMID GRUELING COMPETITION, NOT JUST SOME POWERHOUSE COMFORTABLY ATOP A SO-SO CONFERENCE.
But another thing I was beginning to learn was to trust the vibe I was feeling from someone else. I was gaining confidence in recognizing the energy that others give off. You can’t put your finger on it or necessarily describe it to others, but it’s there. I was learning to trust my gut, as you should learn to trust your own. It’s rarely wrong.
Coach Swinney had vibes to spare. When he said something while looking you squarely in the eye, you just knew that he meant what he said and that he would do everything possible to make it happen. What I heard didn’t carry a shred of doubt or uncertainty.
Coach Swinney’s position of leadership was crystal clear. As I came to appreciate later, he led with absolute clarity and honesty. If you did something well, he’d congratulate you. If you messed up, he’d critique you in an equally blunt manner. He never wanted even the least bit of confusion in anyone’s mind about what he was saying and why he was saying it. That drew me to him.
So, after thinking about it and praying for guidance, I committed to Clemson—one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I made another good decision shortly thereafter.
Since my classroom and football experiences underscored the importance of preparation, it occurred to me that now might be an ideal time to do a little planning and preparation for what I wanted to achieve over the next several years.
I took out a piece of notebook paper and began to write. Thinking as I went along, I considered what sorts of major goals I wanted to achieve now that one of the first, biggest steps—committing to a major college football program—had been completed.
AFTER THINKING ABOUT IT AND PRAYING FOR GUIDANCE, I COMMITTED TO CLEMSON—ONE OF THE BEST DECISIONS I’VE EVER MADE.
I wrote slowly:
• Win an ACC Championship
• Win a national championship
• Win the Heisman Trophy
• Graduate from Clemson within three years
• Move on to play in the NFL
That piece of paper is still in my childhood home. It means far too much to me to ever lose track of it. And seeing my goals spelled out like that gave me a plan and set me up to work as hard as it took to achieve them.
But the decision to eventually attend Clemson in no way clouded my commitment to Gainesville High School. During my high school career, I set numerous Georgia state football records, including total yards (17,134), total touchdowns (218), career passing yards (13,077), and career passing touchdowns (155). I also rushed for 4,057 yards and sixty-three touchdowns.
More important, the team enjoyed great success. In addition to advancing to the state semifinals twice, we won the overall state title my junior year, beating Ware County 49–13 in the title game. I remember the bus ride home from the Georgia Dome. With highway patrol escorting the bus into Gainesville city limits, sirens filled the air. We arrived back at the high school well after midnight. Still, hundreds of fans were waiting to greet us and share in our joy and achievement. For me, the experience showed just how much our team meant to the community, how our success was theirs as well.
This came on the heels of the wild celebration that took place on the field after the game itself. As people charged from the stands onto the playing field, Coach Miller and the team’s seniors gathered on a small stage to accept the championship trophy. At the time, I was standing next to Coach Miller’s wife.
“Deshaun, you need to be up there,” she told me, motioning toward the stage. “You’re the reason we won this thing.”
I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. “It’s not my turn,” I replied.
At first she had a look of complete shock on her face. Then, bit by bit, she started to smile. She understood completely how I felt and what I was trying to say.
As a servant leader looking to continually grow, I realized I had more to achieve. However wonderful it was to win the state championship, this was just one of my goals. Plus, I was not yet a senior, and the stage was occupied only by seniors. I knew my time would come. This was theirs.
The next fall I graduated from high school early. I wanted to be on Clemson’s campus as soon as I could to take part in spring workouts, since I knew that the more practice time I had with this new team, the more ready I would be when it came time to play my first game.
AS A SERVANT LEADER LOOKING TO CONTINUALLY GROW, I REALIZED I HAD MORE TO ACHIEVE.
I firmly believe that preparation is one of the most important tools for success. Preparation makes me better positioned to succeed on the field, and it also occupies my mind as I get ready for a game. It’s a way for me to chill, and, once I’m on the field, preparation allows my instincts to kick in and take over.
In that sense, preparation allows me to relax. Then, once it’s time to perform, I’m physically and mentally at my peak to excel.
PASS IT ON
• Consider the last time you had to prepare for something important—a test, a presentation, a speech, anything you can remember. How did you go about preparing for it? Was there any method to how you prepared? What was the outcome? Were you pleased or disappointed with the results?
• Have you ever made a list of your goals? Take the time to come up with a list of things you want to accomplish—that’s the first step toward making them happen. I encourage you to consider short-term goals (one year or less) as well as five- and ten-year goals.
• For me, film study is as much about reviewing my own mistakes as it is learning about other players. Do you ever take the time to review your own performance and think about how you can improve? Ask for feedback from your peers, or find a way to review your wins and losses and think about how you can improve next time.
YOUR CHALLENGE
The next time you prepare for something important, pay as much attention to your preparation as to what you’re preparing for. Think about the steps you need to take, and write them down. Then, when you think you’re ready, take a bit more time to prepare even more. Record the results and determine if the extra bit of preparation made a difference.