The hotel where the Clemson Tigers were staying in Miami had an event hall officially reserved for a celebratory dinner with the coaching staff and a few ACC representatives. However, by eleven in the evening, that formal dinner had already dissolved into something entirely different. Music blasted from the sound system of someone who had clearly come prepared, and most of the team was spread out between the main hall and the adjacent hallway with drinks in hand, the euphoria of victory still running at full speed.
Someone had put up an improvised banner that read ORANGE BOWL CHAMPIONS, handwritten in marker and taped to the wall with duct tape. Several players took turns posing in front of it with the trophy, which someone had managed to sneak out of the formal dinner room before the event officially ended.
Sammy had delivered on his afternoon promise to invite a few girls he met outside the stadium after the game. By a quarter to midnight, the hall held nearly twice as many people as when the night began. Laquon stood at the center of a crowd, recounting the story of Wyatt's touchdown with far more dramatic gestures than strictly necessary, while Martavis Bryant competed for the exact same audience with his own version of events—which, according to him, was the correct one.
"It went like this," Laquon said, extending his arms to illustrate the route. "The safety bit left, and I—"
"That's not what happened!" Martavis interrupted from across the room.
"I was on the field!"
"I was on the field, too!"
Nobody paid much attention to who was actually right, because the story itself didn't matter as much as the sheer joy of telling it.
Wyatt stayed inside for the first hour, accepting congratulations and greeting people he barely knew, but who tonight acted as if they had been friends for years—fueled by that specific, high-octane energy that only comes from winning a major bowl game.
A staff member from the team's public relations department asked him for a photo for Clemson's official social media accounts. Wyatt posed with the trophy for the second time that night while a couple of teammates shouted things in the background that were almost certainly not going to make it into any official publication.
At some point amidst the noise and dim party lights, he decided he needed a break.
He slipped out through a side door that led to an outdoor second-floor terrace overlooking the parking lot, and beyond that, the Miami city lights, which blazed at that hour with their usual indifference.
The air was humid and warm in a way Wyatt still hadn't fully grown accustomed to after months in South Carolina. Behind the heavy door, the noise of the party became muffled, reduced to a steady, low bass that was felt more than heard.
He leaned against the railing for a moment, closing his eyes and letting the night breeze do its work while a group of people passed through the parking lot below, laughing at something he couldn't quite hear from that height.
He wasn't alone.
Tajh was standing at the far end of the terrace, leaning against the railing with a bottle in hand. His gaze was fixed on a point in the night sky that wasn't particularly impressive, yet he studied it with the same intensity he would give a complex defensive scheme in a film room.
"Thought you'd be inside celebrating," Wyatt said, walking over.
Tajh turned his head. "Needed some air," he replied. "Too many people, too much noise."
Wyatt leaned against the railing beside him, keeping a reasonable distance between them as the city spread out below in a scatter of lights that formed no particular pattern.
"How are you feeling?" Wyatt asked after a moment.
Tajh let out a slow breath before answering. "Strange," he said. "Good, but strange."
"Strange how?"
"For four years, I've woken up thinking about the next practice, the next game, the next play that needs correcting," Tajh said. "And now, suddenly, that's over. There is no next practice. No next game in this jersey. I don't really know what to do with all that energy that used to be channeled one way."
"So what are you going to do?"
"Draft prep, I guess," Tajh said. "Trainings, the Combine, team interviews... that whole machine that starts up right now."
"Sounds like more of the same."
"It's different," Tajh said. "It's not for a team anymore; it's just for me. And that changes the whole weight of it."
Wyatt stayed quiet, letting Tajh continue.
"But there's also something peaceful about it," Tajh went on. "Four years of giving everything I had, and I finish with this: an Orange Bowl win, four touchdowns in my last game, and knowing I'm leaving the team in good hands. That weighs a lot less than I thought it would."
"Did you think it was going to weigh more?"
"I thought I'd feel lost," Tajh admitted. "Four years is a long time to build an identity around something, and then suddenly, that something ends."
"And you don't feel lost?"
Tajh considered it for a moment, genuinely thinking it through. "A little," he said. "But less than I expected. I think it has to do with seeing this team finish strong... seeing that what we built stays standing without me."
"'Good hands'?" Wyatt repeated with a faint smile.
Tajh looked at him. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."
"I don't know if I'm ready for that," Wyatt said with an honesty he hadn't planned on sharing tonight.
"Nobody's ready until they have to be," Tajh replied. "I wasn't ready when I stepped in as the starter for the first time either, and yet here we are."
They stood in silence for a moment, the party music barely filtering through the door while the Miami skyline flickered below.
"I'm going to miss this," Tajh said finally. "Not just the football, but this. The locker room, the road trips, Sammy's stupid jokes at three in the morning before an exam."
"You still have tonight," Wyatt said.
Tajh let out a short laugh. "True," he said, raising his bottle.
Another silent moment passed between them before Wyatt spoke up again.
"Hey," he said. "When you sign your pro contract, you better buy me a few drinks as a thank-you for everything I taught you."
Tajh looked at him with an eyebrow raised. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me," Wyatt said, keeping the same stone-faced expression he used before a snap. "You owe me that, at the very least."
"And what exactly did you contribute to this equation?" Tajh asked, crossing his arms in mock outrage.
"I made you a better player through healthy competition," Wyatt replied without breaking character. "That's a service that usually costs money."
Tajh laughed for real this time, throwing his head back for a full second. "Alright," he said once he recovered. "I owe you the drinks."
"The best ones you can find."
"The best ones my contract allows," Tajh corrected.
"That works, too."
"You're going to have to wait for me to sign something first."
"I can wait," Wyatt said. "I've got two more years of college ahead of me anyway."
"Two years where you're probably going to break half my records," Tajh said, without a trace of resentment in his voice.
"That's not my problem," Wyatt replied. "That's yours for not setting them high enough."
Tajh raised his bottle toward Wyatt, and Wyatt clinked his against it, the sound of glass lost almost entirely in the city's background noise.
"To what's coming," Tajh said.
"To what's coming," Wyatt repeated.
Both took a drink. Tajh leaned his elbows back on the railing, returning his gaze to the dark Miami sky, which still wasn't anything spectacular, but somehow felt appropriate for the moment.
They stayed like that for several more minutes without saying much, the party carrying on behind the door and the city lights flickering below, until Tajh finally straightened up.
"I should head back inside before Sammy takes full credit for the win all by himself," he said.
"Go ahead," Wyatt replied. "I'll stay out here a bit longer."
"Don't stay out here all night," Tajh said, turning toward the door. "You're gonna miss the best part of the party."
"I'm giving the sky ten more minutes."
"The sky's not going to change much in ten minutes."
"You never know," Wyatt replied, keeping his eyes on the horizon lights.
Tajh shook his head with a smile, gave Wyatt one last pat on the shoulder, and headed inside, leaving Wyatt alone on the terrace with a half-empty bottle in hand—and the Miami lights still humming below, completely indifferent to what had transpired that night in the stadium.
The next day, the bus carrying the team back to Clemson left Miami early. Most of the players slept through the majority of the trip, recovering from both the game and the previous night's celebrations. By the time they reached campus, late afternoon was settling over South Carolina with that specific, golden January light that makes everything look a little softer than it really is.
Nobody went straight to bed, though.
Someone had sent a message in the team group chat even before the bus arrived on campus, so by the time they stepped off, everyone knew where they were headed without anyone having to say it out loud.
Tradition was tradition. The entire team—with the Orange Bowl trophy still in Tajh's hands—walked toward Memorial Stadium, where Howard's Rock waited on its pedestal at the top of the hill, exactly where it had waited before every game of the season. Its metal plaque had been there for decades, reminding every player who passed by what it meant to represent that program.
Wyatt walked up the hill alongside Laquon, the crisp January air filling his lungs after Miami's humidity. The turf of Death Valley stretched out below, empty and silent without the sixty thousand people who normally packed the stands on autumn Saturdays.
"Feels weird walking up this without anyone in the stands," Laquon said, looking down.
"It's going to feel different next year," Wyatt replied.
"Better or worse, I don't know yet," Laquon said.
Dabo was waiting at the top for the whole team with that specific look he got during major moments—the kind where he didn't need to raise his voice for everyone to listen. The Orange Bowl trophy gleamed softly in the fading afternoon light in the hands of the man holding it.
"This season wasn't perfect," Dabo said once everyone was gathered around the Rock, the January wind gently swaying the stadium flags around them. "We had a loss that hurt, but we learned from it, and we finished the best way possible."
Nobody said a word.
"Touch the Rock," Dabo said simply. "And run down that hill like it's the first time. Because every time you run down it, it's the first time for someone watching from those stands—even if there's no one out there today."
One by one, the players filed past, running a hand over the rough surface of the rock with that mix of solemnity and routine that only exists in traditions passed down through generations. When it was Wyatt's turn, he kept his hand on the cold stone a second longer than necessary, thinking back to the first time he had made that exact gesture in August, when he barely knew half the team and didn't even know if he would play a single snap that season.
Then he sprinted down the hill alongside the rest of the team, Laquon at his side shouting something that got lost in the wind, with the Death Valley turf welcoming them—empty, yet somehow still charged with the same energy of every Saturday from the season that had just come to a close.
When they reached the bottom of the hill, a few players collapsed onto the grass just to feel it against their backs, while others kept running to midfield with their arms spread wide, as if sixty thousand people were still watching from the stands.
Wyatt stood alone for a moment in the middle of the empty field, looking up toward the dark stadium lights as the South Carolina January sky began to fade into total darkness.
Eleven months.
It was hard to believe everything had happened in just eleven months.
Laquon walked over and dropped onto the turf beside him, extending his arms.
"Sit down," he told him. "You missed out on doing this the whole game."
Wyatt laughed and sat down beside him. The empty stadium stretched out around them, and the season that had just ended was already starting to feel like something belonging to the past—even though just a few hours ago, it was still happening.
Author thought
That's the big debate I have for the team—after all, both (Rams and Eagles) are great teams with huge fan bases, and they're also in the midst of a rebuild and need a quarterback to lead the franchise.
On the one hand, Pederson and Sirianni can develop great dual-threat quarterbacks—after all, they both learned from Andy Reid—but on the other hand, McVay is an offensive genius and can build an offensive system around Wyatt that maximizes his abilities
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