Before the Houston Texans selected him with the first overall pick in 2014, one image stood out when you heard Jadeveon Clowney‘s name: a flying helmet.

It belonged to Michigan running back Vincent Smith. As it floated through the air during the 2013 Outback Bowl, a transformation took place. Overnight, Clowney turned into a fierce monster who can devour running backs and quarterbacks at will, all before palming the ball as though it was a tiny figurine.

After the vicious hit, Clowney’s draft stock skyrocketed. Suddenly he was a generational talent set to storm the league. Suddenly he was preparing to take up residency in every backfield. And suddenly he was among the best can’t-miss first overall picks in recent memory.

Then just as suddenly, he was gone.

Clowney suffered a knee injury in his regular-season NFL debut, which later led to microfracture surgery. The “will he ever be the same again?” conversation immediately followed.

But Clowney recovered fast because he’s not remotely normal. Maybe too fast? That was the fear heading into 2015 training camp. This gem of a draft prospect already had his knee poked, prodded and reassembled. Now he was already going to have it rattled and smacked during game action as well?

There he was, though, sometimes looking like a shell of himself during his second season, and other times looking like his normal self.

With OTAs now underway and the NFL offseason chugging along swiftly, the two-time first-team All-SEC player had an announcement to make, per ESPN.com’s Tania Ganguli:

Jadeveon Clowney had a Lisfranc injury that prematurely ended his 2015 season. Says he did not need surgery and is 100%. #Texans

— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) May 23, 2016

Everyone feels great during the offseason. Everyone has either lost or gained the right amount of weight or has become faster. The ailments that derailed a season are always silenced in the jolly, sunny times of late May and June.

But this feels different. Why? Mostly because we all want it to feel different.

Watching a uniquely talented player being stripped of his opportunity to shine because of injuries is an example of football’s cold, brutal nature at its absolute worst. And if Clowney doesn’t rise now, it may not ever happen.

He had 4.5 sacks in 2015, along with six passes defensed, a forced fumble and 40 tackles. Clowney also recorded 22 quarterback hurries and 30 total pressures in 300 pass-rush snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. He recorded a pressure on only 7.9 percent of his total snaps, though that may only tell a half-truth about the player we saw in 2015.

Clowney’s most recent season was average at best compared to his outside linebacker peers. His pressure percentage ranked 30th among the 33 outside linebackers in 3-4 schemes who played at least 50 percent of their team’s defensive snaps, per PFF.

The dark cloud over Clowney hovers lower when considering his sole purpose on a football field is to rush the passer. Predictably, he was assigned to chase after the quarterback on 94.9 percent of his passing snaps, per PFF, the second-highest percentage at his position. Those two percentages (his pass-rush volume and pressures) show that Clowney was asked to do a specific job in a specialized role on passing downs, and he largely failed.

At this point, though, the darkness over Clowney lifts as you ask yourself the following question: What were the realistic expectations for a player returning quickly from microfracture surgery, which is notoriously debilitating?

Those 4.5 sacks represent a fine season, especially when nearly all of them (3.5) came over a four-game stretch late in the year when Clowney was feeling more like the freakish mass of lumbering muscle he became at South Carolina. In terms of games played, he’s still not far removed from the 2012 college football season. That’s when Clowney recorded 13 sacks and 23.5 tackles for a loss.

This table shows he’s a multidimensional defender capable of being a firm edge-setting presence against the run:

When thinking realistically about Clowney’s 2015 performance, one must reduce his season to an even smaller sample size, searching for moments of brilliance. There needs to be some forgiveness, particularly early in the year when he was still finding his form.

Upon changing from a broad view that doesn’t account for his recovery to a zoomed-in look at a series of games or plays within them, the seeds for potential moving forward are planted. That’s when we’ll see the Clowney who was deemed worthy of being a first overall pick.

When narrowing the view to just two games from 2015, his potential emerges immediately, as Clowney scattered flashes of his immense talent and athleticism throughout each.

The first came in Week 2, which was when a third-ranked Texans defense provided an early blueprint for how to contain Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. He averaged only 5.3 yards per pass attempt against Houston, significantly lower than his overall season average of 7.7 yards.

Clowney played a modest 62.8 percent of the Texans’ defensive snaps in that game. Yet he still finished with five quarterback hurries, a batted pass and a defensive stop.

He didn’t record a sack, which is both the shining jewel every pass-rusher chases and a misleading metric. Though sacks are the most efficient way to defend any pass, simply being disruptive can be just as effective, and Clowney utilized his speed to consistently make Newton’s life miserable.

The shining example of his impact came during a 2nd-and-13 play in the first quarter.

Clowney was at right defensive end for this passing down, and getting to Newton meant forcing Carolina into a 3rd-and-long situation.  He lined up in a four-point stance, and then exploded at the snap as he so often does. Remember, we’re talking about a 6’5”, 266-pound athlete who ran a 4.53 in the 40-yard dash at the combine. Speed is his thing.

Quick strides that eat up space give Clowney access to angles others only daydream about. On the play in question, he became an oversized sprinter. He created the angle shown below after one short step sideways to set up his route around the edge, followed by three long, looping strides to turn the corner.

He had already established a path to Newton with minimal resistance before even making contact.

Credit: NFL GamePass

Panthers tackle Michael Oher couldn’t come close to matching Clowney’s acceleration around the outside. He was caught flatfooted while trying to shift his weight and counteract the rapid movement of his blocking assignment.

So when contact finally came, Clowney had set himself up for an easy win. With his speed building so Oher couldn’t punch into his chest, Clowney swiped with his right hand, sending the blocker even further off balance.

Credit: NFL GamePass

From there, the rest was easy; it was a matter of first gaining leverage, then using it to finish the job. Clowney tucked his shoulder underneath Oher’s arm and kept his legs pumping. He arrived in time to swat the ball in Newton’s hand as his arm came forward, which resulted in an incompletion.

Credit: NFL GamePass

Clowney excels by creating and capitalizing on leverage, with the element of surprise through speed the main foundation for his thrashing ways.

But he’s capable of winning trench battles with raw strength, too. Even if he’s double-teamed, which the New England Patriots tried in Week 14.

The Texans rushed only three on a 3rd-and-short, which freed up two blockers to focus on Clowney. He quickly turned a disadvantage into embarrassment.

The 23-year-old engaged with Patriots left tackle Sebastian Vollmer and looked to be contained for a fleeting second. That changed with one violent left hand that clubbed Vollmer, sending him staggering in cartoonish fashion.

Credit: NFL GamePass

Even if you’re new to football, it’s still easy to identify this cardinal rule for pass blocking: You should probably be facing the guy you’re assigned to block.

If you’re not and the pass-rusher can read the name on your back—as Clowney could here—then awful things tend to happen.

Credit: NFL GamePass

Linger on that image to appreciate its true football beauty. Standing with his back turned is a 325-pound offensive lineman who thought he had solid footing against Clowney. But then he did a nearly full and somewhat graceful pirouette.

Clowney also had to fight off guard Shaq Mason for his first of two sacks on the evening, both for a loss of 10 yards. Mason was easy grunt work after the former SEC Defensive Player of the Year had already penetrated deep into the backfield. He made Mason slump off his shoulder as though the rookie was little more than a towel at the gym.

Then quarterback Tom Brady was exposed and left to surrender.

Credit: NFL GamePass

Clowney recorded two sacks, seven total pressures and five defensive stops in just those games against the Patriots and Panthers, per PFF. That’s plenty of promise spread over only two of his 13 games in 2015. He also posted a sack, four hurries and two batted balls during a Week 11 win over the New York Jets, and four hurries again with another batted ball against the Atlanta Falcons in Week 4.

The sum of that—the draft pedigree, the game film oozing with a rare blend of power and speed, and the multiple weeks when Clowney was the center of chaos—is a uniquely versatile pass-rusher who could, and should, rise in his third season.

But we’ve said the same about the past two seasons, and because of circumstances out of his control, Clowney has struggled with the should part of that sentence.

Including the playoffs, he’s appeared in only 17 of a possible 33 games over a two-year career. Clowney missed the Texans’ final two games of 2015 with a foot injury and was active for a mere four games during his rookie year. He desperately needs to stay healthy while turning his flashes of dominance into regular high-level play for a breakout season in 2016.

If he doesn’t do that, Clowney’s career will continue to teeter toward draft bust status. And other young talents will pass him to become the league’s fastest-rising defender. Here are just a few of the other candidates for that title:

• Ryan Shazier (inside linebacker, Pittsburgh Steelers): Much like Clowney, Shazier has struggled to stay in one working piece. But when healthy, he was downright ferocious while averaging 7.3 tackles per game in 2015. The highlight of Shazier’s season came when he painted the Cincinnati Bengals black and blue during a Wild Card Weekend game, finishing with 13 tackles and two forced fumbles.
• Ronald Darby (cornerback, Buffalo Bills): Darby has already made a whole lot of teams look foolish for nearly letting him fall out of the top 50 during the 2015 draft. He finished his rookie season with 21 passes defensed, and he’ll now go about turning a few more of those breakups into interceptions.
• Kony Ealy (defensive end, Carolina Panthers): Ealy would have added Super Bowl MVP to his career resume had the Panthers pulled off a comeback in Super Bowl 50. He was a penetrating and ball-hawking force, racking up three sacks, a forced fumble and an interception. The second-round pick in 2014 was a rotational defender during his second NFL season, but he will now slide into a full-time role thanks to Jared Allen’s retirement.
• Bradley Roby (cornerback, Denver Broncos): Roby showcased something just as important as physical skill with his forced fumble during the Broncos’ AFC Divisional Round game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He showed elite instincts and the ability to act on them quickly with pinpoint precision. Though he’s still the third cornerback in Denver behind Chris Harris and Aqib Talib, he had 10 passes defensed during the regular season despite playing 59.6 percent of the team’s defensive snaps. With the widespread use of sub-packages, the third cornerback on most teams has grown to become a vital contributor. There are few better than Roby.

There are two other first-round picks on that lis, but none are close to Clowney, or even in the top 10. That’s why it feels strange that two seasons after he was expected to pulverize opposing offensive linemen as the top pick, we’re still talking about the possibility of a breakout.

The sparkling plays dissected here are among the few on his brief NFL highlight reel, a small sample size limited by a severe injury. But forget his famous helmet-dislodging hit, and flip back a few years earlier to visually feast on Clowney owning the high school gridiron, even while periodically playing as a running back(!). It’ll be the best 12 minutes of your day.

What if a truly healthy Clowney—that Clowney—finally arrived in the NFL? And what if he went about the business of fulfilling his potential alongside J.J. Watt, the league’s most feared pass-rusher, who has 38 sacks over the past two seasons alone?

Right now we mostly have just those “what ifs” from Clowney, with plenty of fuel for hope. Turning that hope into highlights in 2016 will determine whether he booms or busts.