Jadeveon Clowney Returns Home with a Familiar Number

South Carolina native Jadeveon Clowney has played a lot of football in this area, growing up as a star at South Pointe High School in Rock Hill before moving on to play his collegiate ball at South Carolina. For the last ten plus years, he's spent most of his time away from home to fulfill his dream of playing in the NFL. Now, he'll get to continue living out that dream right in his backyard playing for the Carolina Panthers.

"My family is close and I've played for five other teams and there wouldn't be no better feeling than to go back and play for the team you grow up right down the road from. I'm looking forward to playing here," Clowney told reporters on Friday. "I grew up a big fan of Julius Peppers. I was a Pep fan and he kind of made me want to play defensive end when I was in high school, so I moved from running back to d-end and now look. I ended up in the National Football League after switching positions."

In addition to returning to his roots, Clowney will also be going back to a jersey number that he wore dating back to his youth football days - No. 7.

"When I first came on my visit I asked if 24 was available and they said yeah. I was like, man I played well in 24, that's my Kobe Bryant year and I wanted that. And they said seven was available too and I was like oh man, that would take me back to high school. I think I'm going to go with seven.

"I always wanted to wear seven. I went to high school right down the road and went to college right down the road, so I was like yeah, I want it. I'm trying to turn that number back up. I'm excited to wear number seven this year because it was my favorite number growing up when I was younger and I always said I wanted to wear that in the National Football League, so I get a chance to do that this year. I always played well when I wore seven, everywhere I went."

In 2023, Clowney had one of the best years of his career registering 43 tackles, 19 QB hits, 9.5 sacks, and nine tackles for loss.