“The Young Vet”: Rising from scout team to first team in two months? Clayton Powell-Lee hasn’t played like a true freshman – and with his career still young, he’s looking to uphold both sides of his family name’s legacy.
By Andy Demetra (The Voice of the Yellow Jackets) | Inside The Chart
Gary Lee finished his Georgia Tech career ranked in third in school history in receiving yards and played two seasons with the NFL’s Detroit Lions. But were he to do it over again, the former Yellow Jacket wide receiver (1983-86) would have chosen a different position.
“I would talk to him about it,” said his son, freshman safety Clayton Powell-Lee. “He’s like, ‘Man, I wish I could play defense.’ I asked him why. He said he’d rather deliver the blow than take the blow. We kind of laugh at that.”
He may not be able to change the past, but Gary Lee has found a more than suitable alternative: watching his son blossom into a budding playmaker on the Yellow Jackets’ defense.
After beginning fall camp on the scout team, the 6-2, 175-pound Powell-Lee stepped into the starting lineup following a season-ending injury to free safety Jaylon King on Oct. 1. All he’s done since is rack up 42 tackles, two fumble recoveries, an interception, and his first ACC Defensive Back of the Week award. His 14 tackles against Florida State were the most by a Tech true freshman in more than two decades.
At his current rate of 7.8 tackles per game since entering the starting lineup, the Atlanta, Ga., native could finish with the most tackles by a true freshman since 2008 (in essentially half a season):
Most tackles by true freshman (since 2000):
| Cooper Taylor | 65 | 2008 |
| Morgan Burnett | 50 | 2007 |
| Charlie Thomas | 48 | 2018 |
| KeShun Freeman | 46 | 2014 |
| Clayton Powell-Lee | 42 | 2022 |
“You find those guys every now and then that might not be the biggest, might not be the fastest, they don’t have the exact measurables – not that Clayton doesn’t, don’t get me wrong – but they just have the uncanny knack for being around the football,” said interim head coach Brent Key.
In essentially half a season of play, Georgia Tech safety Clayton Powell-Lee (29 – above) has recorded 42 tackles, two fumble recoveries and an interception.
That precocious play has already earned him the nickname “Young Vet” from defensive backs coach Travares Tillman. He first uttered it during a preseason film study while watching Powell-Lee read a route and intercept a pass.
“Everybody was kind of confused by it, but once I started producing and being more consistent, that’s when they went, ‘Oh, that’s why they call him Young Vet.’ It stuck, and we just kept rolling with it,’” Powell-Lee said.
Such a rise hardly seemed a given. Powell-Lee didn’t arrive at Tech a gilded recruit – of the Yellow Jackets’ 15 freshman signees in its class of 2022, he had the 11th-highest rating, according to the 247Sports composite. He started fall camp on the third string, but in almost every scrimmage, recalled defensive coordinator Andrew Thacker, he kept making “splash” plays.
“He’s got as good movement traits as anybody on the back end. And he’s got great finish tools,” said Thacker, a former four-year starting safety at Furman.
“At every opportunity that he had, he was just ahead of the curve. So much of that is the intangible qualities, just the maturity that he has. He is not a normal true freshman. He does not operate like a true freshman that you generally have in college football,” he added.
By the week before Georgia Tech’s season opener against Clemson, Tillman had moved Powell-Lee to backup free safety behind King. That leads to the other aspect of this ascent: Powell-Lee had never played free safety before coming to Tech. At Westlake High in Atlanta, where he earned All-Region honors as a senior, all of his playing time came at strong safety.
Once Tillman moved him to free safety, he quickly sought out King for advice.
“The day they moved me, I texted him. I was like, ‘Hey, I’m behind you. Let me know when I’m in there, anything I can fix, anything that I can improve on, because I’m really about perfection,’” he said.
That counsel continues to this day. Even though he’s injured, King still watches film with Powell-Lee and swaps ideas with him on which techniques to use against certain receivers. In return, Powell-Lee is effusive in his praise of the redshirt junior and the way he’s accelerated his learning curve. He almost considers him a personal assistant coach.
“He’s always by my side, in my ear. I don’t know if you’re seeing it on the sidelines. After every single series, me and him are literally talking the entire time – about certain things I saw, about how he saw things, how I can play things the next series,” he said.
VIDEO: Clayton Powell-Lee's fumble recovery helped ice the game against Virginia Tech
Powell-Lee’s love for Tech started early. In his bedroom growing up, he said, “I had a Georgia Tech blanket, Georgia Tech tailgate stuff, everything. It was literally all Georgia Tech. No other school.” He fondly recalls going to games at Bobby Dodd Stadium, where his Dad would sometimes get him onto the sidelines (Lee still holds exalted status at Tech for his kickoff return for a touchdown in a win over Georgia in 1985).
Powell-Lee remembers attending one game in particular, a win over Duke when he was around 8 years old, when he got invited to the Georgia Tech locker room afterwards.
“I was just like a little kid around a whole bunch of big brothers, having fun, enjoying the music that was playing. It was really a wholesome moment because everybody was taking me under their wing,” he said. When the Yellow Jackets beat the Blue Devils in overtime Oct. 8, he admits he got flashbacks while bounding back to the locker room.
The Lee part of his last name may give him cachet among Tech fans, but the name before the hyphen carries a considerable legacy as well. Powell-Lee is named after his maternal grandfather Dr. C. Clayton Powell, a trailblazing figure in the Atlanta medical and civil rights community. A native of Dothan, Ala., Powell was classmates at Morehouse College with Dr. Martin Luther King, and after medical school he became the first Black doctor of optometry to join the Georgia Optometric Association. In 1969 he co-founded the National Optometrists Association, which opened doors for thousands of African-American students interested in joining the field. He also served as a vice president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP, where he worked alongside future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall to file cases to desegregate Atlanta public schools. His wife Romae Turner Powell, who passed away before Clayton was born, was the first Black state court judge in Georgia.
Dr. Powell passed away in October 2020 at age 93, but Clayton says his wisdom still resonates with him.
“He was one of the few people in my life that I could really talk to about anything. That’s why he was so special to me,” he said. He still remembers the lessons his grandfather gave him on the importance of education and never getting too high or too low.
That evenness has served him well as he’s adjusted to an earlier-than-expected role on the Georgia Tech defense. He and the Yellow Jackets face a daunting test Saturday at No. 13 North Carolina (5:30 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network from Legends Sports), which last week clinched the ACC Coastal division title. Led by quarterback Drake Maye (34 TD/3 INT), the Tar Heels rank third nationally with 341 passing yards per game. In an odd twist of fate, Gary Lee played North Carolina in Chapel Hill as a senior in 1986. The Tar Heels’ starting quarterback that day was Mark Maye, Drake’s Dad.
Powell-Lee knows the challenge it’ll place on him as a free safety.
“The key to this game is more eyes. Eyes, and playing great technique,” he said.
Spoken like the grandson of a trailblazing optometrist. And the son of a former Yellow Jacket. And a true freshman who’s quickly making his own name in the Georgia Tech secondary.
Competitive Drive Initiative
In a unified endeavor, Georgia Tech, the Georgia Tech Foundation, Georgia Tech athletics and the Alexander-Tharpe Fund have come together to accelerate funding for student-athlete scholarships with the launch of the Competitive Drive Initiative. The initiative kicks off with the Accelerate GT Match Program, where any new gift to the A-T Fund’s Athletic Scholarship Fund made through Dec. 31 will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Georgia Tech Foundation, up to $2.5 million. Should Accelerate GT reach its $2.5 million fundraising goal, the matching gift would result in a $5 million impact for Georgia Tech athletics. To learn more and to contribute online, visit atfund.org/accelerate.
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