No deviation from plan

Speaking to media at the NFL combine two weeks ago, Williams sent shockwaves across the NFL landscape with a simple — and yet entirely logical — statement on not conducting traditional medical examinations at the combine. Thirty-two teams couldn’t draft him, he said.

“There’s only one of me,” he said with a confident grin, noting he’d conduct medical examinations with individual franchises.

By Williams’ final year at USC, The Athletic reported Williams was making as much as $10 million from NIL deals. He has operated differently by design, for a decade, a path carefully mapped out and crafted around capitalizing upon his talent.

When he was about 12 years old — as he described in his 2022 Heisman Trophy speech — a tearful Williams sat in a hotel room with his father after a loss, devising a comprehensive plan to mold himself into the best quarterback possible. He applied for a training program called the QB Factory, located in the DMV area — District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia — in Maryland and run by quarterback trainer Chris Baucia,

grinding until 10 p.m. a few nights a week to throw. And when he was simply a freshman in high school, father Carl approached nonprofit director Patsy Mangus about helping consult on their “Caleb Cares” foundation, a pro-mental health effort that forms the backbone of much of Williams’ public image.

“I think him and his dad did a great job with keeping his circle small, setting a plan, and really working that plan to its fullest,” Baucia told the SCNG, back in the fall.

A few years behind, but headed to the same destination, Lewis is following his.

The week Joey King took the head-coaching job at Carrollton, he got a call from an unknown number. It was T.C. Lewis: “Hey, you don’t know anything about us, but we’re coming.”

King had mentored Trevor Lawrence, a future No. 1 draft pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars, at Georgia’s Cartersville High; it was all T.C. needed to see. And Lewis started as a freshman for Carrollton, one of the top programs in Georgia, throwing 48 touchdowns in back-to-back seasons.

Williams’ signature play of high school ball, a legendary game-winning Hail Mary to beat DeMatha High in 2018, was in part the craft of late nights working with Baucia, specifically honing a drill stepping up in the

pocket and firing a deep ball. Lewis has been molded just the same — but while Williams has often popped off the page as a conductor within chaos, Lewis’ strengths are quieter, a hyper-quick processor who relishes in getting the ball out quick in tight angles.

“He believes, ‘If I’m accurate, a defense is going to have a hard time dealing with me,’” longtime quarterback trainer Ron Veal said.

Veal usually only took kids starting around age 10. But he started working with Lewis when his pupil was all of 7. They’d meet after school for workouts January through April, their routine so regimented that Veal can list it at the blink of an eye.

Stretching. 15-step-drop. Drops under center. Threestep drop: hitches, slants, outs. Five-step-drop: curls, digs, outs, posts.

“There was no deviation,” Veal said, “from that script.”

There has been little deviation from any. From the time Lewis started playing youth ball, he and his father were posting his highlights on Instagram. After Georgia ruled in favor of allowing NIL deals for high school athletes in October, Lewis’ social media profile — 133k followers on Instagram — has quickly been parlayed into multiple endorsement deals.

“There’s intentionality behind everything that they’ve done,” King said,

“from an early age.”