David HaleCloseDavid HaleESPN Staff WriterCollege football reporter.Joined ESPN in 2012.Graduate of the University of Delaware.Follow on XDave WilsonCloseDave WilsonESPN Staff WriterDave Wilson is a college football reporter. He previously worked at The Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.Follow on XOct 29, 2025, 08:30 AM ET
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
“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.'”
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
Peters was taken aback. He had been born with amniotic band syndrome, where fiber-like strands tangle around limbs, often forcing amputation.
“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.”
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.
“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.”