By Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
The PlayStation Fiesta Bowl was a rollercoaster for JoyceMarie Turner and her son Nolan, a junior safety for the Clemson Tigers.
Early in the fourth quarter of the NCAA football semifinal playoff game at Sun Devil Stadium, Turner was beaten on a 23-yard touchdown pass for Ohio State as the Buckeyes took a 23-21 fourth-quarter lead.
“Oh my gosh. I was just crushed,” JoyceMarie recalled. “I thought, ‘That was Nolan.’ My heart hurt for him.”
Clemson would retake the lead 29-23, only to see the Buckeyes drive down the field.
“I was assuming we were most likely going to lose by one point,” the mom said of an anticipated touchdown and extra point. “I just, I couldn’t watch any longer. I just put my head in my lap.”
Cheers from fans around her and throughout the stadium prompted her to raise her head.
“Everyone started screaming around me and saying, ‘Nolan caught the ball.’”
The game-clinching interception stamped No. 3 Clemson’s ticket for its date at the Mercedes Benz Superdome against No. 1 LSU in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Jan. 13.
But Clemson couldn’t stop LSU and its record-setting Heisman Trophy quarterback Joe Burrow. LSU knocked off Clemson 42-25, denying Clemson consecutive national championships.
Turner finished the title game with six solo tackles and four assists. He nearly had an interception on third-and-2 at the LSU 33 in the third quarter with Clemson trailing 28-25.
LSU scored two more touchdowns to end Clemson’s reign.
Like Father, Like Son
For the Turners, the national playoffs were just part of the journey, the unanticipated, unbelievable expedition that took Nolan Turner from being the son of a college and pro football legend to an unrecruited high school star to a two-time national champion.
Turner’s father was former Alabama fullback Kevin Turner, who played eight seasons in the National Football League – three with the New England Patriots and five with the Philadelphia Eagles. The elder Turner experienced chronic traumatic encephalopathy and died in March 2016 due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Nolan – who wears his father’s No. 24 jersey number – wishes all the time that Kevin Turner were in the stands to see him perform.
“I know he’s always watching,” Nolan said. “I know where he is. It gives me that peace and I’m not too worried about it. Yeah, it would be cool for him to be down here on Earth to experience and talk about some of those things together.”
JoyceMarie, Kevin’s ex-wife, admits that football’s role in his demise made her apprehensive about their son playing the sport. But, like his father, Nolan loves football. She recalls Kevin coaching Nolan in his youth and telling her something he knew she didn’t want to hear when he was 8.
“‘He’s a natural out there. He’s not like the other kids,’” she recounted Kevin saying. “‘It’s not because Nolan is my child and you know I never pushed football on Nolan. But he’s a natural out there. He just gets it.’
“That was that,” JoyceMarie said. “There forward, he just shined every time he went out there and he loved it.”
Nolan remembers talking with his dad about football and the danger of the sport.
“He always had confidence in the game and how it’s developed over the years, how people handle head trauma now differently than they used to,” Nolan said. “We had that discussion and he was always comfortable with me playing.”
As a senior at Vestavia Hills High School, Nolan was a 2-star recruit, one who had garnered little attention from major college recruiters. His best offer was to be an invited walk-on at Alabama, his dad’s alma mater. Fate dealt him a better hand when, following a 45-40 loss to Alabama in the National Championship Game in January 2016, four Clemson defensive backs declared for the NFL Draft.
Suddenly, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney needed to plug holes in his secondary. After watching Nolan’s video, the former teammate of Kevin Turner came to Vestavia and offered Nolan a scholarship.
“It all happened really fast,” Nolan recalled. “One thing changed and, boom, I ended up here at Clemson somehow.”
Look Toward the Next Play
On a late December night before a new decade was born, Nolan twice ended up in the brightest spotlight of his football career. On the first, he was beaten by Chris Olave on the touchdown pass that gave the Buckeyes a 2-point lead.
“I got beat inside a little bit and I was probably playing with the wrong leverage,” Nolan recalled. “I was pretty mad at myself (but) I always have a next-play mentality for me. I had to let that one go and come back out there and keep playing.
“We had a lot of time left. I had a lot of confidence in our offense for them to go down and score, which they did. We just had to go back out and make one more stop.”
On the field after the game, Swinney picked up the story from there.
“I told Nolan right after we scored, I said, ‘That’s why you don’t put your head down. It ain’t over,’” Swinney told ESPN’s Rece Davis. “I said, ‘You’re gonna get the winning, you’re gonna get the interception to win this game.’ That’s what I told him.”
And as though the coach were looking into a crystal ball, that’s just what happened.
“I was in cover-2 so I had to get back there, read No. 1 (Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields), get my eyes back inside,” the safety said. “The receiver shut it down and I was kind of left out there in the middle of the field by myself.”
In hindsight, Nolan believes Olave, the receiver who beat him earlier, saw him on top in coverage and broke off his route. Fields, feeling the pass rush, was already making the throw.
“The ball was in the air and I just went and made a play,” Turner added. “It was a big change, for sure, in emotion. It went from a low to a high right there. I was just focused on that next play.”
And, he said, he felt the presence of his father with him.
“I always do,” Turner said. “Whenever I put No. 24 on, I feel it. I represent him when I’m out there, wearing his number on my back.”
