Can Kedon Slovis get back to his freshman form? BYU’s QB shares his own story of what went wrong at USC

Provo • Back in the summer of 2020, the college football world heaped expectations onto Kedon Slovis.

In the preseason Heisman polls, Slovis’ name was mentioned alongside Justin Fields, Trevor Lawrence and Spencer Rattler. His record-breaking freshman year stirred hope into USC’s championship aspirations. And there were projections that the rising sophomore could be a high NFL draft pick.

But somewhere in that buildup, the man at the center of it all quietly knew there was something wrong.

When he dropped back to pass in his private workouts, he couldn’t control the ball. His spiral no longer zipped. His arm wasn’t right and his rehab was off-schedule.

“First time in my life where I threw a football and it wouldn’t go where I wanted it to go,” Slovis said. “It wouldn’t spin. And I never had an issue throwing a spiral. And that was the first time ever where it was like, ‘Well I can’t throw a spiral sometimes.’”

He played anyway, struggling at times through a 5-1 2020 season. It wasn’t awful. He threw for almost 2,000 yards. But his passer efficiency rating dropped by 23 points and his interception rate nearly doubled.

The shine of a 3,500-yard season wore off and his first-round NFL hype petered out.

Now, three years later, Slovis is still trying to regain that status as a surefire NFL draft prospect. He is at BYU to do it — his third destination in as many years.

The health Slovis is enjoying now has him hopeful for the season to come.

But there are things he wishes could go back and change.

“Everyone is like, ‘Oh your freshman year,’” Slovis said. “It’s like well, I got hurt at the end of my freshman year. ... I didn’t feel like I was myself with my arm.

“I never wanted to say this openly at the time but I did not feel confident in my arm because my arm wasn’t where it should have been. Like I don’t think I was really truly, 100% that season. So when I say I wasn’t confident, of course you’re not confident, because you are not healthy.”

The signs of something wrong

It was fairly evident early on that offseason something was off. And it wasn’t just because of the errant throws or the dead balls coming out of his hands.

When Slovis used his normal throwing motion, it hurt.

“It didn’t hurt [all the time]. But it hurt doing it the way I wanted to do it,” Slovis said.

The year before, Slovis injured his elbow in the Holiday Bowl against Iowa and was knocked out of the game. But really, the entire 2019 season put stress on his arm as USC asked him to throw it nearly 40 times a night.

“People forget, that year there were two or three games where we had no running backs,” Slovis said. “I think [wide receiver] Amon-Ra St. Brown had a rushing touchdown against Colorado, played running back. So there were a lot more passing stats out there probably that year, too, because we had to throw it.”

It looked great on paper, but it wasn’t good for a true freshman’s health. He complained of arm fatigue down the stretch. By the time the Holiday Bowl injury came around, Slovis knew a grinding rehab was ahead of him.

At that stage of his career, Slovis trusted the team medical staff to rehab. Some veterans opt for outside counsel, but Slovis had never been through that process before.

“I didn’t know. It was the first time I was really injured in my life,” Slovis said.

To make matters worse, Slovis was sent home for months that spring as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the globe. He was left to his own devices.

When he came back for camp, the trainers did their tests and he was cleared. He figured that would be it.

“I think at the time I thought I was fine. And if you did the tests, like with the trainers and stuff, I think I probably would have passed,” Slovis said.

“But in terms of, ‘Can I throw the ball as hard as I wanted to?’ The motion that says, ‘Hold it right here’ [at 90 degrees for the test] and hold it back [to throw] are two different things. So I think now I know how my body works and how college athletic training works. And how to kind of navigate rehab and all that stuff. I think I would have kind of gone about that differently.”

Either way, Slovis went out and played in 2020. People questioned whether he was truly healthy. They questioned whether he lost the moxie that had defined his early career.

His accuracy dropped and his completion percentage went from nearly 72% to 67%. His yards per attempt dipped, too.

“I think at the time, instead of actually acknowledging what was going on, I think I was trying to ignore it. Like ‘Oh, you just got to get your mind right,’’ Slovis said.

Then-USC head coach Clay Helton publicly defended his quarterback as the questions mounted. But privately he, too, understood what was happening, trying to offer relief as the hits kept coming.

“Any head coach that has been in that situation, you’re always going to pull him in and be able to say, ‘The best players I’ve ever been around — or just like those great golfers or those great pitchers — they throw that pitch or they make that swing and they’re able to move on to the next one,’” Helton said. “I thought Kedon did a really good job learning that concept.”

The shortened Pac-12 season ended with USC losing to Oregon in the Pac-12 championship. The damage to Slovis’ reputation as a passer, meanwhile, had already been done.

“I don’t have any regrets because I didn’t know any better at the time,” Slovis said.

It was only later he would find out.

Finding out

That next offseason Slovis truly unpacked what went wrong. He went back to the drawing board and sought outside rehab.

“The guy who was working on me and got me better was like, ‘Dude, I don’t know how you are throwing a football like this,’” Slovis recalled. “I was cleared but seeing how your arm feels and the stability of your arm, he was kind of joking, but [said] ‘I don’t know how you are throwing a football. It probably hurt.’”

It explained a lot of what was happening. Slovis told him it did hurt when he threw it normally. And when he looked at some of the accuracy issues that had plagued him, he found out why.

“You overcompensate [when your normal throwing motion hurts] and then your mechanics get bad and then you are inaccurate,” Slovis said.

That offseason, Slovis also had to deal with the rumblings that he lost his confidence. It is not a good label as a quarterback and draft prospect. But he didn’t feel like it was true.

As he got healthier, he realized that it wasn’t confidence; it was faith in his arm. It was impossible to not have doubts.

“Does that screw with your confidence? Yes. But I think the way I kind of go over that is it wasn’t like I wasn’t a confident person. It was like, well you are not confident because you are not 100%,” he said. “So, yeah, you lost confidence. But it wasn’t because something happened. It’s just because of how I was reacting to the injury really. I wish I knew that at the time.”

A reflection

Slovis is now a fifth-year quarterback at BYU. He never thought he’d be in college at this point. The plan all along was to play three years at USC and become a franchise quarterback.

There are a number of reasons he isn’t there right now. Helton was fired at USC two weeks into his junior year, derailing his final season in California. When he transferred to Pitt, he lost his offensive coordinator and the scheme changed to a run-heavy offense.

It can’t all be blamed on a concerning sophomore season. But it certainly didn’t help.

And now Slovis has to grapple with what happened and what could have changed. Should he have played that year?

“I don’t have any regrets, no,” Slovis said. “And I would have played even if I knew [at the time]. I would have played again if I could. It wasn’t that I was hurting all the time. I think I would have gone about my rehab and recovery a lot differently.”

It led to the natural second question of whether he should have sought outside help sooner. Slovis doesn’t know if that is definitively true, but it is something he considered later. He never felt good that season.

“I think I would have felt comfortable. Because it wasn’t an injury that should have kept me out, or kept me from feeling 100%, that long if I went about rehab differently. Or maybe rehabbed with people outside the building or whatever it was,” he said.

As he starts this season at BYU, he feels fully healthy. He has an outside training group in California that includes former BYU quarterback John Beck. And he is finally ready for a fresh start.

“I think looking back, well knowing now after getting work done, I should have just been more honest about how I actually felt when I threw the ball,” Slovis finished. “That is another learning curve. I don’t have any regrets because I didn’t know any better at the time.”