TAMPA, Fla. -- Too many turnovers. Too many slow starts. Too many times in 2016 it seemed Deshaun Watson was playing against both the team on the opposite sideline and the shadow of his brilliant 2015 season.
After becoming the first player to throw for 4,000 yards and run for 1,000 in a single season, Watson returned to Clemson for an encore performance that would ultimately be judged by the way it ended.
Now a national champion with wins against Oklahoma, Ohio State and Alabama all in 2016-17, Watson will go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks in college football history.
Alabama is the definition of college football royalty in the late-BCS and early College Football Playoff era, and Nick Saban is its architect. When he's been challenged by out-of-this-world talents like Watson, Tim Tebow or Cam Newton, has responded with adjustments to ensure The Process result in the necessary outcome.
After watching as a Watson-led Clemson blasted his defense for 40 points a year ago, he slenderized and rebuilt Alabama's defense to be ready for the modern spread and up-tempo attacks. But even that tactic failed against Watson, who cracked the code and became the first quarterback to beat Saban in a national championship game.
In his two matchups against Saban and the Crimson Tide on the sport's biggest stage, Watson accounted for 941 yards of total offense (825 passing, 116 rushing), eight touchdowns (seven passing, one rushing) and just one interception, the latter of which came in last year's contest.
All week in Tampa the narrative was centered on Alabama's ability to turn opponents over and the Tide's trend of converting those miscues into scores. Though Clemson's offense got beat up early, Watson started the second half on a hot streak, hitting 11 of his first 15 pass attempts after halftime and tossing two touchdowns to bring the Tigers back into the game, all while being interception-free.
Twice now Watson has been a Heisman Trophy finalist, but after finishing as a runner-up this past December, he said the trophy that mattered was the one they don't vote on, the one that's won on the field in January. Though Louisville QB Lamar Jackson won the award on the strength of brilliant start to the season, Watson finished stronger but was penalized by voters because of 15 regular-season interceptions and the constant, inevitable and unavoidable comparisons to his tremendous 2015 performance.
"He didn't lose out on the Heisman; the Heisman lost out on him," a triumphant Dabo Swinney said after the game. "They lost out on an opportunity to be attached to this guy forever. But this guy, his class, his humility, this was his Heisman tonight and this was what he wanted. This is what he came to Clemson to do."
Watson has wins over Nick Saban, Urban Meyer and Bob Stoops. He won't need that Heisman association with wins over three future Hall of Famers. A graduate from Clemson after three years on campus with over a 3.0 GPA, Watson declared after the game he will enter the NFL Draft, and now will be remembered for the way his career ended.
Watson picked apart Alabama -- again -- this time throwing the winning touchdown in an all-time great title game with a play you will see on highlight packages for years to come.
Watson said he wanted to have his "Vince Young moment" on Monday night, one year after he broke Young's title game total offense record in the loss to Alabama. With just a little bit more time than he had in that game, Watson was able to cement his legacy forever.
"We work on [the] two-minute drill pretty much almost every day in practice whenever we have time," Watson said. "I just flashed back from last year when they scored, and when we scored, and we were down five but we ran out of time.
"I just smiled right when they scored. I seen the two minutes and one second on the clock, and I just smiled and I just knew, I just told my guys, 'Hey, let's be legendary, let's go be great.' I told myself, 'They left too much time on the clock.' Last year they ran out the time, but this time they left us a little bit too much."
Watson wanted to win trophies that weren't voted on, and he wanted to "sign his name with an exclamation point" at the end of the season.
Standing on stage in Tampa finally a champion with music blaring and teammates dancing, he drew his signature with his hand along the side of the golden College Football Playoff trophy while Swinney jubilantly delivered a victory address a loyal Clemson fan base that had waited 35 years for hear.
Watson might as well have been writing the final line of his manifesto while affixing his name to college football's history book and etching this moment -- his moment -- in our memories. He leaves the game as the man who was first conquered by Alabama and Nick Saban only to rebound despite a rising tide of demands and expectations to slice through one of the sport's best defenses and take down arguably the greatest coach in college football history.