CLEMSON, S.C. — In the seconds after he became Clemson’s all-time leader for career rushing touchdowns Saturday evening, Travis Etienne headed to the sideline, took off his helmet and looked up.
With his face front and center on Clemson’s jumbotron, about 80,000 fans cheered for him.
It had taken just 12 seconds into the second quarter of the Tigers’ 59-14 victory against Wofford for Etienne to score rushing touchdown No. 48, on an 86-yard sprint no less, breaking the school record James Davis cemented in 2008.
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Etienne looked up at himself on the big board, as he often does when he’s headed for the end zone, and cracked a gentle smile. Then he started to make his rounds, gearing up for all the teammates who wanted to make sure they got a chance to hug their star.
“I really wasn’t thinking much,” Etienne would say afterward of the moment. “I had seen the ref right there. He was about to trip me up, but then I saw (junior wide receiver) Tee (Higgins) with a great block, so I just kind of pressed off of Tee’s block and was like, ‘Dang man.’
“It really (hasn’t) dawned on me yet, honestly. I really haven’t thought much about it.”
Maybe later, that will change.
As Clemson heads down the stretch of a 2019 season it hopes culminates with another national championship, Etienne is on the cusp of becoming the greatest running back in program history.
Having broken Davis’ record and having tied former Clemson running back C.J. Spiller’s mark for career total touchdowns (51) on the same score, there’s only one thing left for Etienne to accomplish.
The 2018 national champion and defending ACC player of the year is 441 yards away from breaking Clemson’s all-time career rushing yards record, set by Raymond Priester at the end of the 1997 season.
It has been quite the career for a Louisiana native who wasn’t on Clemson’s recruiting radar until about a month before National Signing Day in 2017, and who also was the fourth-stringer when he initially arrived on campus.
“I feel like once I leave, maybe I’ll grow old and I’ll look back on it and I’ll really see how amazing it was,” Etienne said.
How has he done it?
“He’s kind of ‘Thunder’ (Davis) and ‘Lightning’ (Spiller),” Dabo Swinney said, referencing the two former running backs and their Clemson nicknames for their respective styles of power and speed. “He’s the combination of both.
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“Special.”
The consensus at Clemson is that Etienne really flashed in his truest form as an uncontainable runner in open space for the first time on a summer afternoon in 2017.
Specifically, it was Day 5 of preseason camp. That’s when Clemson suited up in full pads for the first time.
It wasn’t long before the kid with the old-school silver braces across his teeth took off on a long run once he found a gap.
Higgins, who came in with Etienne as a freshman that year, had been under the impression that Etienne was a walk-on. That’s how quiet and unassuming the vibe is that Etienne gives off.
But this particular run showed a different, more aggressive side.
“We just kind of thought, ‘I don’t know, maybe he’ll redshirt or something.’ And then we get into camp,” Swinney said. “He broke a run and I mean, it was like, ‘Whoa.’”
Etienne wouldn’t relinquish the team’s attention.
For the rest of preseason camp, Etienne broke off so many long runs that it felt like he was coming up with at least one a day. Put him with the third-stringers? He’d break one off. Put him with the second-stringers? He’d break off another. Line him up with the starters, which included a star-studded defensive line now in the NFL? He’d handle them, too.
As Clemson came down the stretch of camp and entered into its portion of August when it started to practice at Jervy Meadows — a grimy, grass parking lot adjacent to the baseball stadium that Clemson uses every year to encourage toughness in the dead of the summer — Etienne was doing it again.
Tony Elliott, Clemson’s co-offensive coordinator and running backs coach, still remembers a particularly explosive Etienne moment, after he took off on a quick counter scheme to the boundary against a defense that doesn’t often relinquish chunk plays.
“Man, he took off and he was gone,” Elliott said. “He hit more big runs in that fall camp than probably all of the guys that I’ve had combined. (Wayne) Gallman, (Andre) Ellington. I’m talking about big, long runs like you saw (Saturday) and running away from people. That’s when I knew, ‘This young man is special.’”
What makes Etienne particularly dangerous is how he runs.
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Don’t be fooled: his natural speed and ability to simply outrun people in a foot race are among his biggest assets.
But he can also run through a crowd in a way that is unique to him, Spiller told The Athletic as he broke down Etienne’s game. Spiller is third on Clemson’s all-time rushing list with 3,547 career yards. And he fully expects Etienne (now ranked fourth) to become the all-time record holder.
“Just his balance. He has tremendous balance if you really watch how he plays. It’s never really (where) one man can take him down,” Spiller said of Etienne. “He’s always moving forward on contact. His pads are always going forward. He’s never really going backward. And then, it’s just his vision. That’s the biggest thing as a running back. You’ve got to have great vision and just a great feel for the game. And he has all that. To me, he’s the total package that you want in a running back.”
Spiller said he thinks both he and Etienne have the dangerous straight-line speed that can lead to a touchdown at any moment; but he thinks he’s more agile, while Etienne is more powerful. He believes Etienne is a stronger runner, and statistics back up that observation as it takes several people to bring Etienne down on a regular basis.
Advanced metrics from Sports Info Solutions say that of Eitenne’s 1,102 rushing yards this season, 715 of them, or 64.9 percent, have come after contact.
His average of 5.8 yards after contact leads the nation among players with at least 50 rushes. Among players with 100-plus rushes, he is the only one with an after-contact average of more than 4.5 yards.
Swinney credits a large part of that ability to Etienne’s lower body, which has evolved since he arrived on campus. He might not look the part of someone who is physically imposing — Swinney described him as “puny” when he arrived — but he has built noticeable strength.
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Etienne weighed in at 197 pounds in August 2017. Two years later, that number was up to 208. Elliott knew he had an athlete on his hands when he saw how smooth Etienne played high school basketball, able to dunk at 5-foot-10.
“That guys three years from now, when his upper body really fully matures? He’s going to be unbelievable,” Swinney said. “He is special. I’ve never had a guy like him that has such collision balance. The ability to just run through tackles. Yards after contact. He’s just so hard to tackle. He gets in such unorthodox positions. But yet stays on his feet.”
Etienne wouldn’t commit one way or another Saturday night when he was asked if Clemson’s matchup with Wake Forest in two weeks might be his final home game. As a junior, he is eligible for the 2020 NFL Draft.
Running backs have notoriously short careers in the NFL, and barring a bad game all-around at North Carolina in September, Etienne has consistently shown scouts what he is capable of.
After that UNC game, when he didn’t hold up in pass protection, fumbled and ran for just 67 yards and a touchdown on 14 carries, Swinney was in Etienne’s business constantly for almost two full weeks. Etienne got only three carries in the second half, but making quarterback Trevor Lawrence vulnerable to UNC’s defense was something coaches didn’t give him a pass for.
To Etienne’s chagrin, before he had an opportunity at redemption, he had to wait through Clemson’s idle week. And behind the scenes, Swinney never let up.
“Usually when you have your foot in somebody’s rear, that’s not too comfortable. So, yeah,” Swinney said. “He didn’t like that.”
But NFL scouts will like how Etienne responded to some adversity. Elliott said Saturday night that Etienne was a little quieter than usual after the matchup with the Tar Heels.
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Since then, he has rushed for no fewer than 100 yards in each of his past four games. With 122.4 yards on the ground per game, he ranks seventh nationally, and his yards per carry figure, 8.96, is third in the country.
Dane Brugler, The Athletic’s NFL Draft expert, said it can be tough to peg this early where Etienne might land. But he added Etienne is viewed as a top-50 prospect with the potential to land in the 30-40 range.
To date, there is only one Clemson teammate who can realistically contain him on the practice field, and that is linebacker Isaiah Simmons, who projects to be a first-round pick in April as Clemson’s most versatile defender.
The friends have raced each other in sprints twice, with each of them claiming one victory. The rubber match very well could take place at the NFL combine this spring.
“About that video,” Etienne said Saturday night, referring to a previous tweet of his that went viral. “That was my freshman year and Isaiah was supposedly the fastest person on the team at the time, so I challenged him. He (said) no way I would win, so he picked the race. He picked his best race (about 80 yards), so I beat him in his race that he picked.”
It’s about time for part 2 👀 @isaiahsimmons25 #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/xG9goAtj9d
— Travis Etienne Jr⁶𓅓 (@swaggy_t1) May 1, 2019
“I’m trying to get him again, where we can run a race that I pick. About 50 or 40 yards, something that I can just get out on him so he can’t catch back up.”
In the meantime, Etienne has three more guaranteed regular-season games, plus a potential ACC championship and whatever comes in the postseason to rack up the 441 yards to set Clemson’s career rushing yards record.
Ultimately, he has come a long way.
“He’s one of the few that gets it, and that’s what you really like as a coach,” Elliott said. “When you have a special talent and they know they’re special, but they don’t just rely on their talent, they put the humility and work ethic with it. That allows them to set records and be considered one of the best.”
(Photo of Etienne: Adam Hagy / USA Today)
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