CLEMSON -- A few days after the spring game, we began a series of articles taking a deep dive into each position group.

Each of these articles featured a category entitled "A Stab at the Starter."

So you knew the story on the quarterbacks was going to be a bit of a sensation. Trevor Lawrence had just lit it up in the spring game, while Kelly Bryant kind of stunk it up. But that was just one small snapshot that didn't tell the whole story of spring practice.

Nevertheless, here's what we wrote in that category that day:

Dabo Swinney said after the spring game that Bryant would be the starter if the season started that day. And Bryant might well be the starter heading into August camp. But the bottom line to us is Lawrence is going to be extremely difficult to hold off for very long. While most of the outside discourse on this topic uses 2014 as a reference point for how this situation will be handled, the reality in our mind is this is a different situation.

It was clear during spring practice that Deshaun Watson was going to be a special player, but it was also clear that he was rail thin and needed physical development. He was also coming off a broken collarbone in August, not to mention an ACL injury he suffered in high school. So there was some natural, justified hesitation to start him in the opener at Georgia.

In our mind, Lawrence looks ready to start from Day One. Nothing at all against Bryant, who was a good quarterback last year. But he’s in a possibly unprecedented situation succeeding Watson and preceding Lawrence. Bryant handled the succession so well last year, emerging from Watson’s shadow to develop his own identity and image while leading the team to a CFP berth that not many anticipated. But now Bryant faces a more daunting challenge because he’s not following greatness – he’s amongst it and competing with it.

Our view is Lawrence is just too good to keep off the field. This offense is getting back to attack mode, spreading the ball around horizontally and vertically and using its wealth of weapons at a breakneck tempo. Lawrence looks plenty capable of being such a distributor. Therefore, we predict Lawrence will start most, and likely all, of the season. We would not be shocked at all if No. 16 is the guy in the opener against Furman.

This passage created figurative -- and probably literal -- gasps. The West Zone message-board thread stretched from Clemson to Dallas. It was actually a news item on the local radio station.

OK, so we went a little too far. In reality it took four Bryant starts before Lawrence made a clear case for the job on the Sept. 22 trip to Georgia Tech.

But we never felt we were that far off in our analysis of Lawrence and what he was going to bring to this offense, this program.

In fact, before the aforementioned passage was published we ran it by someone on the inside. Someone who'd watched every single one of Lawrence's throws during spring practice.

The reply: Nope, nothing off or crazy there.

That's the thing. Over the entire offseason, this staff did almost nothing to pump the brakes on the Lawrence hype. And coaches are almost always eager to do such a thing with freshmen, however talented, who have yet to experience the pressure of playing in front of all those cameras and 80,000 fans in the stands.

Each fan base exists in its own bubble. And there is a smaller bubble within that bubble that contains a faction of cynical fans. This bubble echoed with laughter at the idea that Lawrence would start all or most of the season. The same was true over the summer when Lawrence popped up on Heisman betting odds for 2018.

Bryant was a veteran who guided Clemson to 12 wins and a No. 1 spot in the CFP in 2017. His head coach was notoriously loyal to veterans trying to fight off newcomers in position battles. Thus, Lawrence was going to have to wait his turn. And it was going to be a long, painful wait for fans who were going to have to sit through another season of Bryant.

Swinney strongly believes this has to play out on the field. It did so in 2014, when it became clear to him in the third game at Florida State. Waiting that long might've cost Clemson that night in Tallahassee, because Cole Stoudt wasn't very good before he was displaced for good.

Bryant was better than Stoudt. Bryant gave the offense and this team what it needed in a tight game at Texas A&M in Week 2. Watson was a magician almost from the start. Lawrence, though wondrously talented, still had some learning to do.

Exactly three months after his first college start against Syracuse, Lawrence will take the field in the Cotton Bowl as a composed, confident, absurdly talented triggerman. He's a first-year freshman but it feels like he's older than that just in the way he carries himself.

And how crazy is it that this type of talent is under the radar compared to two other CFP quarterbacks who were just in New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony?

A year from now, Lawrence is a good bet to be in that same room as a Heisman finalist. It sounds truly crazy to say an offense that averaged 45.4 points in 13 games has only scratched the surface of what it will be, but that's the reality of a group that features so many young players -- including a running back (Travis Etienne) who will also be prominent in that Heisman conversation in the coming offseason.

Imagine Tua Tagovailoa, Lawrence and Jake Fromm sitting next to each other as the Heisman winner is named, and then all three in the 2019 playoff.

Bottom line, it feels totally realistic to think Lawrence will contend for a Heisman in his second season at Clemson -- three years after the school said goodbye to the best quarterback in college football and the best player in school history.

You know you've truly arrived when a fourth consecutive run to the playoff feels as much like the beginning of something as the culmination of something.

You know Lawrence has truly arrived when no accomplishment seems out of the question.

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