Twelve months ago, Kelly Bryant was the incumbent starting quarterback on a team that was coming off its third consecutive trip to the College Football Playoff. He had replaced a legend and taken his home state school to the doorstep of a national championship. He was less than six months from the start of his senior season with the nation’s No. 2 team and nine months from being a college graduate.
Short version: It was good to be Kelly Bryant.
Not that it isn’t still good. But 12 months later, sitting down for an interview at Missouri’s indoor practice facility as a college quarterback, well, it’s not where Bryant thought he would be. In many ways.
“Getting ready for pro day. Getting ready to get my name called. Didn’t think I’d be going on my fifth year in college,” Bryant said. “Looking through the combine and all the draft projections, dang, that’s supposed to be me. My name’s supposed to be there.”
Instead, he is a third of the way through spring football in Columbia. Thanks to a new rule that allowed players to appear in four games and maintain a redshirt, Bryant got a second chance at his last chance. He has no doubt he could have been drafted this April, but instead, he chose to have another go at his senior season.
“It’s all God’s timing. He never says ‘Oops,’” Bryant said. “I feel like I have so much left that people haven’t seen and a lot that I can get better at. I’m ready to showcase that.”
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On September 22nd, 2018, Bryant accounted for 176 yards of total offense and two touchdowns as the Tigers pummeled Georgia Tech 49-7. Two days later, the roadmap for his future was torn to shreds and tossed out the window somewhere along Highway 81 between Clemson and Calhoun Falls, SC.
Through four games of split duty, true freshman Trevor Lawrence had gone 39-for-60 for 600 yards, nine touchdowns and two interceptions. Bryant had been 36-for-54 for 462 yards and two touchdowns. Adding in rushing yards, Bryant had just 32 fewer yards of total offense than Lawrence through four games. But Lawrence was in and Bryant was out. Dabo Swinney made a business decision. He had signed the nation’s No. 1 high school quarterback the year before and he felt Lawrence was the better option to lead his team not only as far as Bryant had the year before, but two steps beyond to a national championship.
“Sometimes you get into some tough situations and at the end of the day there are decisions that have to be made,” Swinney recently said speaking to reporters at spring training for the St. Louis Cardinals. “That is what stinks about my job. Sometimes people are happy with those decisions, some people are unhappy with those decisions. But you have to make them.”
“It did affect me. I feel like it just pushed me into a hole,” Bryant said. “I was removed from football. I wasn’t around my buddies, my guys. I’d be at my apartment when I finished working out and they’d still be in meetings and practice. You’ve been in this routine for a number of years and now you’re thrown out of it, you’re having to go through the whole recruiting process, Saturdays you’re sitting at your house watching the game.”
Less than four months later, Lawrence would lead Clemson to its second national title in three years. He threw for 347 yards and three touchdowns as the Tigers beat Alabama and took their place alongside the Tide as college football’s Dynasty 1A. As the Tigers’ season unfolded, Bryant was criss-crossing the country re-planning his future.
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That future would be decided over the course of four months, but specifically on three days. Day one was the Tuesday after the Georgia Tech game.
The news officially came out that Bryant was going to be college football’s most heavily pursued free agent on September 26th. He had informed Swinney via text message the day before—on his 22nd birthday--that he was leaving the team.
Fanbases across the country immediately started pounding away at their keyboards. Who was going to add a quarterback who had accounted for more than 4,300 total yards, 32 touchdowns and played in the national semifinals? Virtually everybody was going to want him, but only one would get him.
“Once we got the notification that we could contact him I just wanted to get in touch with him as soon as possible and see,” Missouri head coach Barry Odom said. “During or after that first conversation, it was how do we find a way to get this guy on campus? Because I knew if we could recruit him enough to get him on campus then it would be real and we would have a shot.”
“We just saw Kelly Bryant’s name hit the Internet and it was, okay, full force, let’s go,” Missouri offensive analyst Austyn Carta-Samuels said. “It was never really an evaluation. We knew we wanted him the whole time so it just became what’s the best way to recruit him?”
On first glance, Missouri didn’t make much sense. Not even to Bryant. He has repeatedly said he had little intention of transferring to Columbia, 790 miles from his home, to a campus and a town much more Midwestern than Southeastern, despite its current conference affiliation. So his reaction to Derek Dooley’s introductory text message wasn’t exactly to jump at the chance.
“I’m like, Missouri? My mom’s like, you’re going to Missouri?” Bryant said. “She’s like ‘I don’t know about that’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know about it either.’”
All Odom wanted was a chance. He got it on October 27th, when Bryant took an official visit for the Kentucky game.
“Before we got here I was like, ‘I’m not coming to Missouri,’” Bryant said. “I’m just taking my visits. I’m going to take all five officials because I didn’t out of high school; I’m just gonna say I came to Missouri just to come.”
He would also check out Arkansas, North Carolina, Mississippi State and Auburn. All four had a geographic advantage over the Tigers, but none were about to go to a bowl game and send a senior quarterback off to the first round of the NFL Draft. Missouri was. And there was just something Bryant couldn’t quite define that never left his mind.
“It’s like you see the one for the first time in a relationship,” Bryant said. “And you’re like, ‘That’s it right there.’”
In many ways, that was the worst weekend of the season for Missouri. The offense failed to get a first down in the second half, the officials failed to identify pass interference, the defense got plenty of stops until it absolutely had to have one and the Tigers lost 15-14 to Kentucky in stunning, gut-wrenching fashion. All the angst and doubt about Odom outside the locker room reared its head again.
But that would also turn into the day that many would deem as one of the best of the season. Because it was that day Odom, Dooley and the staff planted the seed in Bryant’s mind that Mizzou was the perfect place for his final season of college football.
“He wasn’t into the recruiting process,” Odom said. “He was into the substance and wanting to get to know the roster. And at that point, when I knew those were his thoughts and that’s where he was going, I thought we had a real shot.”
“I was very transparent with Kelly in terms of where our team was, especially from a confidence standpoint,” Carta-Samuels said. “He saw himself actually as being a person that could fill or help in a lot of the areas that we had been missing or were missing. So to be honest with you, I think it became almost a strength because he got to see the team stay together despite a miserable moment, obviously. At that point, I think culture was kind of proven to him, the head coach was proven to him, the players buying into the head coach was proven to him and it just became at that point an evaluation of the other schools compared to us. But he had a lot of answers kind of checked off.”
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The second day of the Kelly Bryant’s post-Clemson life arrived on Tuesday, December 4th. He had set that as decision day weeks before. In truth, he had told Odom and Dooley he was coming to Missouri eight days earlier during an in-home visit with the coaches.
“Who told you that?” he says, voice rising. “Yeah, I did. It was an in-home visit. We were out eating with my mom and dad. They were getting ready to leave and I was like, ‘Hey, I just want to let you all know I’m coming.’ They just got happy. I think it was Coach Odom’s birthday that day and I didn’t even know it.”
But on that Tuesday, mere hours before a public decision, news broke that Auburn coach Gus Malzahn had traveled to Calhoun Falls, a last-ditch effort to convince Bryant to play with a different set of Tigers.
“With who he is, the way he’d been the entire time through the recruiting process and all of our dialogue, all he had to say was ‘Austyn, don’t worry about it,’” Carta-Samuels said. “I didn’t ask questions. There’s always doubt. It was somewhere, but Kelly made it easy not to really have to worry about it. “
While the coaches may not have been overly concerned, plenty were. Fans of three teams—Mississippi State and North Carolina were generally not considered major threats by this time— counted the seconds until Bryant’s announcement. As he revealed in a video on Twitter that he would play at Missouri, an audible cheer went up around Mizzou Arena, the students receiving the news in real time about an hour before the basketball team’s 65-45 win over Texas-Arlington.
The biggest question about Missouri’s 2019 roster had its answer. Kelly Bryant was the quarterback. The Tigers had reeled in the biggest fish on the transfer market.
“Everybody wasn’t even thinking about Missouri,” he said. “They’re like, he’s not going to Missouri. And all along, I’m like, I’m going to Missouri.”
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Bryant officially started class at Mizzou on January 22nd. He was locked in to being a Tiger.
For nine days.
Day three for Bryant came on the morning of January 31st, when his football world got rocked again. News of NCAA sanctions against the football program was released and included a postseason ban for the 2019 season with a stipulation that any player with one year of eligibility would be free to transfer without penalty to any other school. That included the quarterback, who had been on campus for less than a week-and-a-half.
“You set goals,” Carta-Samuels said. “One of those goals was to have confetti fall over your head when you win the SEC Championship. That was Kelly’s goal. That goal got taken from him. In that capacity, it was extremely important that we communicated and talked about where he was."
Bryant shut the rumors down quickly. He got word out through representatives the same afternoon that he was staying at Mizzou. He’d already been through the recruiting process twice and the calls began immediately in the wake of the sanctions. He had no desire to do it all again and he made sure his teammates knew it.
“Coach Odom laid it all out there for us,” Bryant said. “He didn’t leave anything under the rug. He told us best-case scenario, worst-case scenario and he came out so truthful. Then all the underclassmen left, the seniors were in there and coach just gave us the floor. I just basically said, ‘Hey, coach, I’m here. We’re all here. We riding with you, we gonna get this thing worked out.’”
Technically, Bryant could still leave at any time. But he seems more like a guy who has been around his new team for years than he does a newcomer.
"He's a great guy,” tight end Albert Okwuegbunam said. “Day one, since he came to campus, it's been nothing but good vibes from him. Took on a leadership role early and he's been great.”
“He’s a great teammate,” Taylor Powell, who could have been next in line as Missouri’s starting quarterback without the addition of Bryant, said. “He’s a great player. We’ve gotten pretty close. Everything’s been positive. He’s a great guy.”
“I can say love comfortably. I love the kid,” Carta-Samuels said. “He absolutely bares all for everyone in this program. Whether you’re picking up towels or giving guys water, he’ll treat you the exact same way as one of his fellow captains. It’s all a testament to him. We have a great program, we’re doing great things, I love what coach Odom’s doing in terms of our cultural direction. But he’s made it easy.”
The seeds that were planted on that weekend in October have taken root. Missouri has everything Bryant hoped it would have: an offense and an offensive coordinator he thinks can foster a chance in the NFL, a feeling of home and family and enough talent around him to put together a strong 2019 season, whether it ends with a bowl game or not.
Mizzou doesn’t quite have everything, though. Despite a dining hall that offers athletes three squares a day and snacks, Bryant brings his own breakfast to the Missouri Athletic Training Complex every single morning.
“I bring my own cereal. I do that,” he says sheepishly. “I probably started doing it like the last two weeks. Like we have cereal here, but I like Fruity Pebbles and Honey Nut Chex so I bring a big box.”
It’s a small price to pay for one more shot as a starting quarterback.
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Divorces are rarely without their ugly side. After leaving Clemson, Bryant was quoted as saying he didn’t think he was given a fair shot, and that his demotion was “like a slap in the face.” They were understandable words — whether they were true or not probably depends on your point of view — spoken out of frustration by a 22-year-old who had just lost his spot as the leader of the country’s best team.
Six months later, entrenched in his second college football home, the feelings have subsided.
“I talk to my quarterback coach, coach (Brandon) Streeter,” Bryant said. “He always checks in on me and makes sure everything’s good. The guys, of course I talk to the guys that I played with all the time.”
Swinney, with another national championship and a consensus spot behind Nick Saban as the second-best coach in the sport, has nothing but good things to say about his former quarterback.
“He’s one of the best kids I’ve ever been around. He is a truly wonderful kid,” Swinney said at spring training. “He’s a hard worker, he’s a committed guy, he’s a guy who will be a great teammate. I’m happy for him. It was something that he really wanted to do. And it worked out. He’s in a good situation. He’ll do a great job.
“I’ll always pull for Kelly. I hope he has a phenomenal year. I’d love that.”
So would Missouri fans. Bryant has turned the page. He values and appreciates everything that happened at Clemson. But it’s over. He’s ready to move on.
“There’s been some days where it’s been tough, especially just calling home, family misses me, ready to come out here and see me,” Bryant said. “But that was the biggest thing just to get away. That’s one of the biggest things I’m loving about being here away from everything.”
It’s not where he thought he’d be. It’s not where anybody thought he’d be. A lot of people didn't think it made sense. But for Kelly Bryant, it’s perfect.
“How can I not come here and play for the coach and the players around here?” Bryant said. “If I did it again, I would make the same decision a hundred times."
