SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- There are two schools located 20 miles apart from each other in the northwestern Atlanta suburbs -- Cartersville High and Harrison High.
Between 2014-18, the schools featured two quarterbacks who would become the top two players in the 2018 recruiting class. As close in proximity as they were as high schoolers, the Fiesta Bowl is the first time Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence will play each other in an official football game.
“It’s crazy how everything works out,” Lawrence said. “We’re both from Georgia like 30 minutes apart and never played each other in a real game. Then have to come all the way to Arizona to finally play each other two years later, after his journey from Georgia to Ohio State and then me coming to Clemson.”
There is only one time that the two have had the chance to go up against each other, and it came in a 7-on-7 game at the Elite 11 quarterback competition in 2017.
Lawrence entered the Elite 11 as the consensus No. 1 player in the country, and showed his dominance for most of the week. Fields came in having recently decommitted from Penn State and was shooting up the national rankings. The future Clemson quarterback owned the week, but when it came time to compete against each other, it was the future Bulldog-turned-Buckeye who’d walk away with a win.
“He probably had the most impressive showing of anybody we’ve ever seen at Elite 11,” quarterback trainer Quincy Avery told cleveland.com of Fields, who took home MVP honors. “He literally didn’t miss for like a day or two. Trevor, of course, he was good too, but I don’t think there was one person who would’ve been like ‘Oh, I’ll take Trevor over Justin’ simply just throwing at that event.”
Avery has trained a multitude of college and NFL quarterbacks, including Fields, former Ohio State quarterback Dwayne Haskins and the Buckeyes’ 2020 commit CJ Stroud. He feels that what Fields did in his first season as a starter, he could have done as a true freshman if given a chance, as Lawrence was last season at Clemson.
That 7-on-7 game at Redondo Union High School in Southern California was Fields showing he was just as good as the player considered to be the highest-rated pro-style quarterback of all time.
“I know that throughout the whole time for Justin everything was ‘Trevor No. 1’ and he wanted to show it to us as he was as good of a quarterback," Avery said. “He did a great job of that at Elite 11.”
Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables also remembers the first time he saw the two on the recruiting trail. Georgia was part of his recruiting area. Though he’s a defensive coach, he knew right away that both were special and needed the immediate attention of Dabo Swinney and the rest of the coaching staff.
“You knew how they were going to have incredible success in college, because they had all the traits,” Venables said. “You want to have the physical traits, but when you have the mental traits, whether it’s the work ethic or the humility or the natural leadership skills, those are things that you can bring with you.
"When you have that, which they both do ... you know you got something special.”
It didn’t take long for either player to display those traits on the field. Lawrence turned his first year into a CFP title and has won 28 straight games — 24 as the starter after sharing snaps with Kelly Bryant for four games in 2018.
Fields is 13-0, a Big Ten champion and Heisman Trophy finalist in his first OSU season. But he had to wait an extra year to show off those traits. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart chose Jake Fromm in 2018, forcing Fields to head 627 miles north to Columbus. Fields watched Lawrence succeed on the national stage while waiting for his opportunity.
“I think players have different journeys,” Fields said. “Just because he’s having success right now, doesn’t really make me jealous or envious of him. People have different paths and it just depends on how you get to that path.”
So now, after two years, their paths will finally cross 1,860 miles from their Georgia roots. It almost surely won’t be the only time. Fields and Lawrence could spend the rest of their football lives connected to each other.
“It’s like it’s kind of perfect, you know?" Lawrence said. "We’ve never played each other for some reason, I don’t know why. Then now we come out here and we get a chance to so it’ll be cool.”
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