ATLANTA — Last year’s rivalry game between Georgia Tech and Georgia was a brutal affair, most of all for Haynes King. A month earlier, the Yellow Jackets quarterback had injured his right shoulder. By the final Monday in November, King still couldn’t throw a ball more than a few feet without a tidal wave of pain radiating down his arm, and the Jackets’ coaching staff doubted he could even play against Georgia.

Then, miraculously, just three days before kickoff, King arrived at practice and uncorked a deep ball. Then another. Then another.

It made no sense. King had seemingly healed overnight. Or, perhaps, as head coach Brent Key surmised, King simply chose not to be injured anymore.

“He’s just got an innately high pain tolerance,” Key said. “He’s able to just block it out. It still hurts, right? But he blocks it.”

That Friday, King threw 36 times for 303 yards and a pair of touchdowns, adding another 110 yards and three scores on the ground in a 44-42 eight-overtime defeat, arguably the best performance in a losing effort in Georgia Tech history.

Two days later, Key texted his QB1, inquiring about the status of his shoulder. King’s response perfectly captured the essence of Georgia Tech’s ultimate tough guy.

“Shoulder’s fine, Coach,” King wrote. “I have been pissing blood for a couple days though.”

In the months since the battered King nearly slayed a giant, his legend has grown. King has led the Yellow Jackets to an 8-0 record, a No. 7 ranking — their highest in the AP poll since 2009 — and forced his way into the Heisman race through the same relentless willpower that’s driven him since he was a boy, when he would totter around his dad’s locker room at Longview High in Texas in full pads, dreaming of his own football glory.

“When he was little, [we’d say], ‘You’re not tough enough to be a Lobo,'” his mom, Jodie King, said, referring to the high school team that her husband coached. “You’ve got to do better. Work harder. Outwork everybody.”

Now, Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner said, he gets texts from friends and coaches and, almost weekly from a member of the opposing staff, relating the same gushing tribute to the Jackets quarterback: “That kid is the toughest player I’ve ever seen.”

These are the stories that built the legend.

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HAYNES’ DAD, JOHN King, was diagnosed with mouth cancer in August 2025. He had surgery then immediately returned to the sideline at Longview, where he’s long since been a Texas high school coaching legend.

“Hold on a second,” he interrupted in the midst of an explanation of where his son got his toughness. “They just cut off part of my tongue, so I need to take a drink of water before we keep talking.”

John King is 238-51 as head coach at Longview in East Texas, a powerhouse that regularly produces FBS stars, including perennial Pro Bowler Trent Williams. King has won 10 or more games 15 times and made state finals appearances in 2008 and 2009. But from 1937 until Haynes King donned a Lobos uniform, the school hadn’t won a state title.

“Longview was kind of the Chicago Cubs of Texas high school football — a huge, rabid fan base that gets its heart ripped out again and again,” said Greg Tepper, the managing editor of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine.

When Haynes was growing up, he went to the East Texas Passing Academy, run by Jeff Traylor, then the coach at Gilmer, about 20 miles from Longview, and now the head coach at UTSA. Traylor, who had coached Randy, Luke and Josh McCown at nearby Jacksonville High School, saw Haynes at camp and told his dad that the kid was going to be something special. But John King is not easy to impress.

“I used to tell John, ‘This kid is just like [the McCowns],'” Traylor said. “He’s athletic, he can throw, he’s tough. John was like, ‘He ain’t gonna be no good. I don’t know what you’re talking about.'”

By Haynes’ sophomore year in 2018, he was unquestionably good, but John saw his son’s ascendance as a potential land mine in his locker room. The Lobos had a senior starter at quarterback, and John wouldn’t humor the suggestion of benching him in favor of his son. But after an early season loss, his assistant coaches wore him out.

“[The competition] really wasn’t that close,” said Don Newton, the school’s head basketball coach at the time who also assisted with football. “The coaches told him we need to make the switch now. And he was reluctant as hell to do that.”

After Haynes took over, the Lobos didn’t lose another game until the state semifinals. That offseason, Haynes, who played nearly every sport, returned to track, where the Lobos hadn’t won a district title meet in 18 years. The championship came down to the 4×400 relay team. Haynes was the anchor.

“I’m thinking, oh f—, my son’s on the anchor, he’s gonna get caught,” John said. “He won that race.”

The next fall, in front of 48,421 fans in the football state championship game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Haynes led the Lobos to a 35-34 win against Beaumont West Brook in the Class 6A Division II state championship game, where he threw for 423 yards and two touchdowns and added 65 rushing yards and another score. The Lobos had their first state title in 81 years.

“That was pure catharsis,” Tepper said. “That’s the loudest I’ve ever heard AT&T Stadium.”

Everyone had been rooting for John, Traylor said, by then an assistant at Arkansas where he provided Haynes’ first scholarship offer. John had served as president of the Texas High School Coaches’ Association, Traylor said, and he had been a mentor to so many in the profession.

“It couldn’t have been more appropriate that John and Haynes were the ones to win that thing together,” Traylor said. “I was watching on my TV in my office crying like a baby.”

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JOHN KING DIDN’T want such resounding praise to confer a big ego on his son after that state title, so he insisted Haynes play another sport in the winter — one where he wasn’t a natural star.

“See how it feels not to be the guy,” John told his son.

Just days after leading Longview to glory, Haynes played his first basketball game of the season and drained a 3-pointer from the corner on his first trip down the court.

“I said, well, I guess you don’t need no shooting practice,” John said. “Smart ass.”

Haynes finished the game 5-of-6 from 3, but the success wouldn’t go to his head.

“He sat around and hung laundry with us after the game,” Newton said.

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WHEN HAYNES WAS a kid, the family would pile into a motor home each year and drive out to Colorado to visit his grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. They would wrestle and race and, eventually, someone would break out a deck of cards or a favorite board game, and that’s when the fireworks would begin.

“He’d get so mad that he would throw the board or knock over all the dominos,” Jodie King said. “He thought somebody was cheating him. At first it was kind of funny but then it’s like, ‘Hey, it’s just a game.'”

Eventually, the family arrived at a solution.

“I was grounded from board games,” Haynes said. “That probably tells you something right there.”

That mentality didn’t come out of nowhere. John King sent a clear message when Haynes was a kid. Only the toughest, strongest, most competitive kids played at Longview, and there was nothing Haynes wanted more in the world than to be a Lobo.

Jodie recalls Haynes complaining about a playmate who started crying and quit a game of tag. The kids were 4.

At birthday parties, Haynes needed to win every contest. Some friend of his would jubilantly tout kicking a ball farther than Haynes, and Haynes would be furious.

A sprawling garden separated the Kings’ house from a lake on their property, and each day, after playing by the water, Haynes would race his dad’s truck back home.

“I’d think he’s fixing to fall over and kick over dead because he ran so hard,” John said. “But he wouldn’t quit.”

By the time he arrived at Texas A&M, where he spent his first three college seasons, in 2020, King’s determination to win had only grown.

“Every drill we did, he won,” said his former A&M coach, Jimbo Fisher. “Every line we were in, he was at the front. All the clichés about leadership, toughness and setting an example — he lived them daily.”

Everything from pickup basketball to a friendly game of cards in the hotel the night before a game, his former teammate Chase Lane said, was played with the intensity of game day.

“There’s got to be times he turns it off,” Lane said, “but I’ve never seen it.”

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LATE IN THE third quarter of Georgia Tech’s game against Clemson earlier this season, the Jackets faced a critical fourth-and-1. Offensive coordinator Buster Faulker called for a direct snap to tight end J.T. Byrne, but the play was a dud. Byrne was hit in the backfield and fumbled, giving the ball back to Clemson and dimming Georgia Tech’s hopes for an upset.

King instantly became that same kid who flipped the Monopoly board in frustration. He sprinted to the sideline and found QB coach Chris Weinke, demanding his headset to talk to the OC.

“Put the f—ing ball in my hands,” King screamed, “and let’s go win the f—ing game.”

On Georgia Tech’s next drive, the Jackets marched 90 yards on 13 plays — five of which were QB runs, including a touchdown from the 1-yard line on third down. On the following drive, he carried it five more times to set up a 55-yard game-winning field goal as time expired.

“I’ve seen him pissed before, but never that pissed,” Weinke said. “We gave him the ball, and we won the game.”

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KING IS LEFT-HANDED. He writes lefty, bowls lefty, shoots a basketball lefty. But all 7,715 of his career passing yards in college came from his right hand.

This particular quirk can be traced back to Christmas Eve 2005, when King was 4 years old. He was roughhousing with his cousins when one climbed onto a treadmill and hit “start.” King had the bright idea to trip her up, but instead, his left hand got caught in the tread. So off the family went to the hospital where they spent the wee hours of Christmas morning in the emergency room.

Growing up, King’s Christmas list for Santa was always the same: signed photos of players from his dad’s team, playtime with his favorite Lobos and DVDs of Longview’s season highlights. He would watch those games over and over from the edge of his seat, even though he knew the outcomes.

That year, a few days after Christmas, King got a visit from one of his all-time favorite Lobos. Tate Casey, best known as the tight end who caught Tim Tebow’s famous jump-pass against LSU in 2006, had also been a prized baseball prospect. King wanted Casey to teach him how to throw. The only problem was that his left hand was still bandaged and bruised.

No matter. King figured he would throw right-handed, just like Casey.

“He wasn’t going to sit around and not play ball,” Casey said. “So I showed him how to throw with the other hand.”

King quickly reared back and zipped a pitch. Casey roared with excitement, urging his coach to “come see what Haynes can do.”

John King sauntered into the living room just in time to watch Haynes unleash another bullet.

“You know,” John said, “he’s supposed to be left-handed.”

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LOGAN PETERS HAS been Haynes’ best friend since they were 5. Peters’ dad coached with John King for a decade, and their two boys were inseparable, even serving as ball boys together for the Lobos until they were in high school.

They were 6 the first time King asked if Peters wanted to play catch.

Peters was taken aback. He had been born with amniotic band syndrome, where fiber-like strands tangle around limbs, often forcing amputation.

“I’m missing my left hand,” he said. “I’d never caught a football in my life.”

King wasn’t daunted.

“Well, let’s teach you,” he said, before walking off some distance and firing a pass Peters’ way.

“He just throws it at me, beeline to the chest,” Peters said. “I catch it in my body, and the point of the football leaves a bruise.”

“OK,” Haynes said. “Let’s do it again.”

“And dude,” Peters recalled, “we played catch.”

They kept playing, every day they were together.

Both boys ended up playing for Longview — Haynes, the star quarterback, Peters, his tight end. In a quarterfinal game of the state playoffs their sophomore year, Peters was a backside blocker on a play going the other direction, but the play broke down. He saw King scramble, reversing field.

“I’m not going to say it’s telepathy, but it’s a brother thing,” Peters said.

Peters shifted and bolted toward the end zone.

“He throws it on the run, super, super hard,” Peters said. “It hits me dead in the chest, and I catch it for a touchdown.”

For Peters, it was his first high school touchdown. For King, it was the pass that set the school record for the most touchdown throws in a single season.

“I saw that green jersey pop, he caught it and everybody just went wild,” King said. “That’s maybe the most fun I’ve ever had seeing him score his first touchdown on a play like that.”

When the two are together now, they still go out into the yard and play catch, King placing the ball dead center in his closest friend’s chest again and again.

“I can’t tell you how great of a guy he is in words,” Peters said. “He’ll be the best man at my wedding and I’ll be the best man at his.”

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IN 2020, KING tested positive for COVID and was forced to quarantine during Texas A&M’s bowl practices. At one of the practices, Fisher noticed a head peering over a tall fence at the end of the practice field, and he quickly dispensed someone to run off the spy.

Soon, the scout returned with news. King had backed his pickup truck to the fence in a student parking lot, stood in the bed, and watched the entire practice.

“I started calling him Jimmy Chitwood,” former Texas A&M offensive coordinator Darrell Dickey said, comparing King to the hero of the movie “Hoosiers.”

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WHEN HAYNES PLAYED soccer as a kid, Jodie King said he would inevitably chase down a ball or execute a slide tackle and come up limping. Each time, some nearby parent would gasp.

“He’s hurt,” they would say, and Jodie would assure the crowd her boy was just fine. She’d seen this theater before. “Just watch,” she would tell them.

“Next minute, he would be sprinting down the field,” Jodie said, “and I’d say, ‘See.'”

When he was young, Jodie used to joke he “could find the sideline blindfolded” during football games, but that wasn’t the Lobo Way. He had to be tough. His parents insisted upon it, and no opponent could hurt King as much as disappointing his parents would. So, King soon stopped looking for the sideline and started looking for contact instead.

“Now, watching him, I’m thinking maybe don’t run so much,” Jodie said.

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KING’S RUNNING STYLE can best be described as a ballet performed by a sumo wrestler. For the trained observer, there is an inescapable grace to the way he moves — those long strides and subtle pivots that allow him to avoid the most dangerous interactions with defenders. To anyone else, he’s simply a bulldozer, crashing headlong into pain again and again, ostensibly in search of yardage but possibly just for the fun of it.

“When Haynes is slow to get up, you think, I don’t know how many more hits this guy can take,” Faulkner said. “No, that’s just when he’s really getting cranked up. When he’s getting up slow, that means he wants some more.”

Weinke remembered a game last season when King was thrown to the ground, then came over to the sideline and informed his coach he couldn’t feel his arm. Weinke yelled for the backup to get ready, but King stopped him.

“But you can’t feel your arm,” Weinke said, exasperated.

“It’ll go away,” King assured his coach.

“And by the next series, it went away,” Weinke said. “That happens all the time. You could stick a knife through the guy, and he’d say, ‘I feel good, Coach.'”

After King, then playing for Texas A&M, broke his ankle against Colorado in 2021, he begged the team’s doctor to give him an injection so he could finish the game. The training staff was baffled, explaining the severity of the injury and that King would need surgery as soon as possible. King relented but still insisted he remain on the sideline for the rest of the game to advise backup QB Zach Calzada.

After King hurt his shoulder last year, Georgia Tech dropped two straight without him and was staring down a make-or-break game against undefeated Miami. King wanted to play.

Doctors said it was unlikely another hit would worsen the injury, but King couldn’t raise his right arm without severe pain. A week earlier, he had been taking practice snaps before a game at Virginia Tech. Without thinking he threw an overhand spiral — maybe 5 yards — back to his center.

“It felt like my shoulder was going to fall off,” he said.

On a scale of 1 to 10, King said, the pain was a nine — which might mean a 78 for a normal human. But Miami didn’t know any of this, and so he took the field, ran 20 times for 93 yards and a score, and tossed six laterals — just enough to maintain the ruse — in a stunning 28-23 win.

“Miami never noticed,” King recalled with a laugh.

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THIS PAST SUMMER, King’s lease was up, but moving was an inconvenience he simply couldn’t endure as he readied for the final fall camp of his college career. Instead, he found a more elegant solution. He moved into Georgia Tech’s locker room.

“One of my big things this offseason was trying to eliminate all distractions,” King said. “And I got a little extra time to sleep.”

King would watch film into the wee hours, then blow up an air mattress in front of his locker and turn in for the night. He would set an alarm for 6:45 a.m. — just about the time the “early risers” made their way into the building — then roll up his mattress and be ready for meetings and workouts and film study.

Haynes King slept in Georgia Tech’s locker room during training camp �� pic.twitter.com/3U3Xe4ExcJ

– ACC Network (@accnetwork) August 30, 2025

His living situation became public knowledge by mid-August, and fans quickly hailed it as the ultimate sacrifice for his team.

Jodie King knows better.

“He was living his dream,” she said. “Football 24/7. That’s all he ever wanted.”

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KEY IS CONVINCED King will have a long NFL career. There are no guarantees King will be a starter at the professional level, he admits, but he’s too good of a player, too talented at things so few others do well and too big a force in the locker room not to have some value.

But when the time comes and King’s playing days are over, there’s little doubt about what awaits.

“He’ll be a hell of a coach,” Weinke said.

Last year, King and Lane attended the SEC championship game in Atlanta between Texas and Georgia. Tech had just played the Bulldogs eight days earlier, so King knew the game plan.

“He’s talking about averages and concepts they can run against this or that defense,” Lane said. “I’m eating popcorn, and he’s like, ‘OK, it’s third-and-8, they need to do this.’ I just came to watch the game.”

When they were kids, Haynes would harangue his sister, Steelie, into playing football with him in the yard. She wore oven mitts on her hands because he threw the ball so hard, and inevitably, she would come running into the house announcing she had quit the game.

“He won’t let me just play,” she would squeal. “He’s too busy trying to coach me.”

Jodie would find Haynes in an attempt to mend fences, but Haynes refused to concede.

“Mom,” he would cry, “she’s running the wrong route!”

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AFTER A DIZZYING start to this season, Georgia Tech walked into a buzzsaw at Wake Forest in Week 5. King struggled in the first half, and the Jackets went to the locker room trailing 17-3, its perfect season on life support.

In the second half, however, King tallied 264 total yards and accounted for three touchdowns, as Tech roared back for a 30-29 overtime win.

Walking off the field, King was sullen.

“I’m sorry, Coach,” he said to Weinke as they walked toward the locker room.

“Haynes,” Weinke replied, “We won.”

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WHEN HE LEFT Texas A&M after three injury-plagued years with a degree and a desire to start fresh, King had two destinations in mind: Arizona State, where he had had an existing relationship with head coach Kenny Dillingham, and Tech, where Weinke, who had recruited him to Tennessee years earlier, was now quarterbacks coach. King wasn’t particularly interested in a specific scheme or assurances of his spot atop the depth chart. He wanted his tribe.

“I wanted to surround myself with like-minded people who believed in me,” he said.

When Key, Faulkner and Weinke made their pitch for Tech at a sports bar at an airport in College Station, King brought three Aggies teammates with him. They wanted to follow their QB, wherever he was headed. Jodie remembers King begging out of games when he was young, wanting to ensure his friends got playing time, too. The idea was absurd to his parents, who had instilled such a competitive drive in their boy, but Haynes always loved two things above all else: winning and his teammates. Key sees that first meeting now as a testament to the leader he was getting.

Walking off the field after a 31-19 loss to Louisville last year, King was sullen when his coach found him and put an arm around his neck. King had accounted for nearly 400 yards of offense, but it didn’t matter. He had flubbed a couple plays, and it was a loss.

Key understood the feeling. This is the burden they share — coach and QB — and they process it the same way.

“Alright, big boy,” Key said. “Stick your chest out. Hold your head up. Let’s go take this s— and eat it together.”

Key and King aren’t exactly kindred spirits. The coach is a former O-lineman, big and boisterous and without a hint of pretense. King is more reserved, tall and lean, his rough edges hidden behind a veil of understated dignity. But they share a worldview, an innate desire not just to win, but to do it the right way, the Lobo Way.

“He’s a good-ass kid,” Key said. “The best compliment I can give him is, in about three months, I’m going to sit down and have a beer with him. And it won’t be the last one we have together.”

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WHEN NEWTON THINKS of those old days at Longview, he can still hear “Big John” calling to Haynes with his Texas drawl dripping with sarcasm.

“Come on, superstar.”

John looks back now, as his son’s college career nears its climax, with a conference title, a College Football Playoff berth and a Heisman Trophy all within reach, and he’s achingly proud of the kid — the man — he helped raise.

He was hard on Haynes. He knows this. He loved his son like he loved his players, and he coached them the way he parented Haynes. And yes, that way might have been more Johnny Cash than Ward Cleaver.

“He had to grow up, and he had to toughen up, and he had to earn his keep,” John said. “I rode his ass. And I did it on purpose, and it was probably unjustified sometimes. But he knew that going in.”

John told Haynes from an early age that he would be hard on him. Haynes always asked for more.

“It never broke him,” John said.

What could break Haynes King at this point? He’s attacked every adversity like some dumbstruck defensive tackle, who may have been bigger and stronger but never more determined.

“He’s probably the most humble guy I’ve ever coached,” Weinke said. “He’s clearly the toughest guy.”

But maybe the process to get here was too much. Jodie doesn’t want Haynes’ story to sound like a cliché of overbearing parents pushing their kid beyond any reasonable limit.

Jodie remembers finding out Haynes would start last year’s Georgia game, bum shoulder and all, when the team got off the bus. She was proud. Look how tough her son was.

Then she stopped for a moment and thought about it: “Am I a horrible mom for not trying to talk him out of this?”

No one could talk Haynes out of playing football. This is the same kid who had shunned his friends to spend hours watching film as soon as a game ended. He didn’t need Jodie and John to push him. They simply played along.

Newton sees so much of his friend John in Haynes now — same quiet confidence, same mannerisms. They even have this way of sticking out their tongues when they crack a joke that feels like a carbon copy of each other.

But it’s the toughness, always the toughness, that stands out most. John was hard on his son. Haynes is now hardened himself.

Is that wrong?

“I regret it now,” John said, “because I love my son.”

Haynes really is a superstar now, no sarcasm required, and he sees no reason for regret. His father’s love was obvious in every lesson John preached, and in teaching Haynes the Lobo Way, he and Jodie gave the kid the only things he ever wanted in life: The game, a team and the chance to show the world what he’s made of.