Monday PM: Tee Higgins lives up to the hype in Clemson's spring game

CLEMSON -- Saturday afternoon wasn’t your ordinary spring game.

Because if it weren’t for the hype train of the new kid on the block wearing No. 16 steamrolling through Death Valley, the biggest storyline of the day would have been Tee Higgins.

We need to admit there was a preconceived notion that the first thing anyone was going to talk about after team Orange teed it up against the White was the quarterbacks.

Trevor Lawrence could have struggled, and Kelly Bryant could have played immensely better, and we still would have picked apart every throw, every completion, every highlight.

© David Grooms/Clemson Sports Talk

Higgins hauls in a back shoulder throw early during Clemson's spring game.

It’s time we took a step back and looked at two of the ultimate truths from the 60-minute scrimmage that just so happened to be on live television.

1. Trevor Lawrence is going to be an extremely special player during his time at Clemson.

That’s the easy one and is probably the understatement.

In the short span, we saw he has the tools and the poise to kick Clemson’s offense into high gear. We can’t ignore that.

But to us as outsiders, when he’ll touch the field is simply a guessing game at this point.

     2.   Tee Higgins is going to make an immediate impact on an offense that was missing something last year the moment the 2018 season kicks off.

We saw it on the first play of the spring game.

The sophomore galloped down the field on the left boundary and snagged a well-thrown 38-yard fade from Hunter Johnson. Fans who weren’t used to seeing so much of the explosive plays in the passing game a season ago quickly got the shot of adrenaline they came to see.

On the next series, Higgins blew by cornerback AJ Terrell again and reeled in the 50-yard touchdown pass from Lawrence that still has everyone talking 48 hours later.

But that play wasn’t his best catch of the day.

On the very next drive for team Orange, Higgins reeled in a back-shoulder catch from Johnson to convert a third down. It was Mike Williams-esque against Auburn in 2016 season opener when that play couldn’t be stopped.

Just before the end of the first quarter, the 6’5 receiver grabbed another back-shoulder throw and walked into the end zone giving him four catches for 118 yards and two touchdowns.

All in the first quarter.

That’s when we knew. Spectators looked around and said, “man, this guy is going to be a star.”

Higgins was so good on Saturday you began to wonder if the storyline may have been different between the quarterbacks if Higgins had lined up wearing a white jersey.

As Deon Cain and Ray-Ray McCloud made their decisions to enter the 2018 NFL Draft, Higgins saw the opportunity at hand. The 9-man position was wide open, and Clemson fans were clamoring for a receiver who could consistently make the downfield plays they became so accustomed to seeing.

Cain was a player who was hungry at the beginning of his career behind Williams, which is something co-offensive coordinator Tony Elliott noted after the spring game. Last season, there wasn’t a great consistency there, and Cain wasn’t the dominant player who could go up and come down with those 50/50 balls.

In moments last year and in the first 30 minutes of Clemson’s spring game this year, Higgins looked to be that dominant player.

“We’re at our best when we have a dominant guy in that position at boundary,” Elliott said.

It wasn’t just the catches that looked impressive from Higgins on Saturday, including what looked like a routine 60-yard catch that was eventually ruled a Christian Wilkins sack. It was his releases at the line of scrimmage.

A soft-spoken, humble Higgins spoke with the media after the game and said the one thing he’s worked on the most this offseason were his releases. Terrell and Higgins have gone back and forth all spring with Higgins getting the last laugh and winning the latest battle.

Jeff Scott agreed with Higgins in a lengthy response that the biggest improvement has been what he’s been able to do at the line of scrimmage.

“Probably the hardest thing for these taller receivers is guys get their hands on them, so they get pushed to the sidelines and get wide like one of the nice catches he made down the sideline early on,” Scott said. “Maybe last year, he would’ve got pushed out of bounds there. So to be able to stay in bounds and get back on the line, where he needed to be to be able to have a chance to field the ball, those are the little things fundamentally that I think he’s really focused on and improved on this spring.”

The next step for the sophomore is to take the summer and get stronger. His goal is to get up to 210 pounds and continue to wreak havoc against a Clemson secondary that has challenged him all throughout the spring.

“(Higgins) goes against one or two of the greatest corners in the country every single day,” Elliott said. “It’s really really big for him.”

We’ve heard all spring that the competition at 9-man has been one where each guy (Higgins, Diondre Overton, and Trevion Thompson) have been pushing each other and all are improving.

After a 50-yard touchdown reception from Overton and a Thompson leading team White with 76 yards of receiving, all signs for that position are pointing up. Elliott remembered a time where Williams and Cain were the one-two punch that imposed fear into most secondaries Clemson went up against in 2016.

“When you have a dominant guy, and you don’t have a drop-off - you had Mike Williams over there, and Deon was the guy that came in,” Elliott said. “You had that one-two punch.

“Imagine if you had that one-two-three punch.”

Yeah, that’d be nice for an offense that was missing a lot of its dominance on the outside last season.

But that combination doesn’t matter if you’re throwing a haymaker.