Charlie Whitehurst says Trevor Lawrence has "lethal" talent

Whitehurst says Lawrence has the talent to do it all.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Thu Jun 25 09:17:05 GMT-04:00 2020

Charlie Whitehurst thinks Trevor Lawrence has a “lethal” kind of talent. He also thinks Lawrence getting knocked around by Ohio State was a good thing for the rising junior.

TigerNet spoke with Whitehurst earlier this week, and he recounted some of his Clemson memories.

However, Whitehurst also has strong opinions about Lawrence, saying that the Tigers’ current signal caller has rare arm talent.

“Just extreme talent. No. 1, the extreme arm talent. There's not a lot of guys that can throw the ball like him,” Whitehurst told TigerNet. “Now that doesn't automatically turn you into a great quarterback, but if you do all the other stuff correctly and you can read a defense and anticipate, and throw the ball all the time with that kind of arm, then you can be lethal. I mean, you could really be... the Aaron Rodgers-type throws and everything. When everything else is good, that arm talent really takes it to the next level, and the reason I keep talking like that is -- a lot of guys with huge arms don't anticipate. They just wait to see the guy open and throw it, and I don't think Trevor is necessarily like that.”

Whitehurst then said that Lawrence has room to grow, and pointed to the big hit that Lawrence took against Ohio State as a learning experience.

“I think that he can. And hopefully, he continues to develop and has a chance to really, really be just a force,” Whitehurst said. “He's got just such a gift to be able to throw the ball that hard, and he's made insane throws. He's athletic, he seems to be tough. I really loved when he got hit against Ohio State. That was awesome. And I didn't know it was going to happen, but I wanted it to happen. I mean, he was hit hard. He was shook. He didn't know if he was hurt. He's going, ‘Good God, am I still in one piece?’ And he came back in, and they were down, and he started to fight.

“I don't know how many times in his career he's had to do that. Not that he's chosen not to do it. He's never had to do it. I mean, every game he's ever played, he beat the s*** out of the other team for the last five years of his life, and I saw a guy that had to choose, ‘Okay, what am I going to do here?’ And he fought, and we won the game, and they started rallying behind him and his toughness. And that's a powerful thing.”

Whitehurst said he can’t wait to see what Lawrence can do in the NFL.

“So, I see an extremely athletic guy. I see a tough guy, and we'll see how good he is at the next level. Who knows? I mean, he's as good a college quarterback as I've seen,” he said. “We'll see. We'll see how good he is. They find you out at the next level. He looks like he's got considerable more arm talent than Deshaun Watson, to me. He's probably not as good a runner, but Deshaun's doing pretty damn good at the top level. He's doing as good as anybody could have guessed.”