USD QB succeeding abroad

Torero football alum Anthony Lawrence continues career in Japan’s X-league

Anderson Haigler / Associate Editor / The USD Vista

Anthony Lawrence stayed close to home for college. Despite receiving interest from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale, the La Mesa, California native elected to attend and play quarterback at the nearby University of San Diego — just a 12 mile or so drive from where he grew up. Playing in front of friends and family during almost every home game, he went on to have an illustrious and lengthy career as a Torero that is nearly beyond compare within the program, a career that saw him become both the USD and Pioneer Football League (PFL)’s all-time leading passer among countless other accolades. A classic tale of a homegrown San Diego talent putting on for his city. But when his time as a Torero wound to a close after a loss in the first round of the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs to Nicholls State University, Lawrence found himself at a crossroads. 

Though he had broken nearly every passing and scoring record left behind by former USD star Josh Johnson, who has spent parts of seven seasons in the National Football League (NFL), though he had continued the program’s legacy of success at a high level — winning the PFL Championship in each of his four seasons as a starter while going undefeated at home in that span — following graduation this past spring, he was in an unfamiliar position: without an immediate place to play. 

A pro day in front of six NFL teams on USD’s Manchester Field in March proved to be impressive, but fruitless. The ball rarely, if ever touched the ground as the 23-year-old USD graduate put himself through his paces before an amount of NFL teams that would have been impressive for a player at a midsize Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) program like San Diego State, let alone one at a smaller FCS school like USD. But though Lawrence enjoyed a masterful showcase, offers from NFL teams simply didn’t materialize.

“I thought it went well,” Lawrence said. “I felt that I put up pretty good numbers on all the testing stuff, and I felt like I threw it pretty well, too. The day after Pro Day was the most optimistic I had ever been in my life about getting a chance to play in the NFL. I thought that I left it all out there.” 

Talent evaluators like the ones who observed Lawrence’s session are known to be brutally blunt in their assessments, and the critiques they offered him were tough to hear, but perhaps familiar to the 6-foot-1 inch, 195-pound quarterback. 

“You’re small,” one quipped. “Your arm isn’t as strong as we’d like it to be,” another added. 

Their comments weren’t all negative. Some told Lawrence that he “looked really good, and surprised some of us.” 

Just perhaps not enough to earn a roster spot right away.

These were slights that Lawrence had heard before. During his recruitment for college football during his career at nearby Grossmont High School, he heard the same things. A record 12,628 passing yards at USD later, however, Lawrence was determined to prove them wrong. And thus, the kid with a rocket for a right arm who had electrified Torero Stadium for years was left to look elsewhere to continue a playing career that certainly had life left in it. The only question was, where?

Offers to play North of the border in the Canadian Football League (CFL) were brewing, but slow to develop. 

“Even though I was super optimistic about the opportunity to play in the NFL, I was realistic, and kept all my options open,” Lawrence said. 

But as the days after the NFL Draft ticked away, Lawrence grew restless, in search of certainty for his next football chapter. He had heard of a professional football league in Japan, where his former Torero teammates Jonah Hodges and Mason Mills had played, but he still wanted to see if an offer from an NFL or CFL team would materialize. A coach from the Japanese league had reached out to Lawrence in the weeks after his pro day, offering him a spot on the team if he wanted it. The coach reached out again weeks later, as Lawrence continued to assess his options, which at the time lacked anything else that was concrete. And after weeks of deliberation and holding out for an opportunity in North America that had yet to develop, the quarterback made up his mind: he was headed to Osaka, Japan to play for the Panasonic Impulse of the Japanese X-League — some 6,000 miles from where he had spent the first 23 years of his storied football career.

“Let’s do it,” Lawrence said at the time. “I didn’t want to wait around and have nothing happen when I had an opportunity to play professional football guaranteed.”

Osaka, Japan is a city of more than 2.6 million people, a major metropolitan center located in the southwest region of the country, about a day’s worth of flying away from San Diego. Few of the 2.6 million Osaka residents speak English. Lawrence described its big-city feel as “exactly how you would imagine Japan to be … a lot of people, a ton of buildings. Super dense. Not a lot of yards, I don’t think I have seen a single house.”  

Before he offered that description, roughly two months after his Pro Day, Lawrence set off for his new home, somewhere that would have little in common with San Diego except for football. If anybody could adapt to continuing their career in a foreign country, however, it would be him. What he may lack in size and arm strength, he makes up for in sheer confidence, once quipping in an interview that, “ … If I go out and play basketball against LeBron, I think I’m gonna have a chance.” 

With that mentality in mind, Lawrence, who spoke “not a word of Japanese” prior to his move, dove headfirst into his new opportunity.

“I’m confident … I feel like I’m a quick learner, I’m able to adapt,” Lawrence said of the move, reached by phone from Osaka. “So I wasn’t scared about the language, or anything like that. I was excited and nervous, but nothing crazy.”

That being said, Lawrence didn’t exactly land in the most tourist or foreigner-friendly spot in Japan, at least language-wise. 

“I’m not even exaggerating — I go a week without seeing a foreigner,” Lawrence said. “It’s 100 percent Japanese people here. They’re not speaking English. It’s really, really, really, different. Especially compared to La Mesa and El Cajon where I grew up.”

And the adjustment to life in a foreign country came quickly, but not necessarily right away. 

“It really hit me like a month ago,” Lawrence said. “It started to be like, ‘I’m out here, and this is different, and it’s hard, and it’s weird.’ For about a week or two weeks, I was super homesick and just not really motivated to go work out or do anything.”

What familiarity Lawrence immediately lacked in his new home, however, he found back on the football field. 

“A couple practices in, the coach tells me to run a play and I run a play, I complete a pass, and it feels like — this is football still, it felt good to still be out on the field playing and running around.” 

After a few weeks, he began to settle in as he got to know his new teammates.

“Being out here, you realize all of the differences in cultures, but you also realize the similarities,” Lawrence said. “There’s guys on the team that like to mess around, there’s guys that work super hard. Being in the locker room feels like being in any other locker room I’ve ever been in. You mess around with the guys, you have fun being on the field, you’re still laughing at practice, you’re having fun, enjoying it … ”

And almost right away, Lawrence began to accomplish what he had gone to Osaka to do: help his team win while putting up big numbers on offense. Though challenging differences did remain, like his coaches speaking limited English and some philosophical differences between the style of play of native Japanese players and his own, Lawrence rapidly returned to the high-flying form that had characterized his time at USD.

“It’s 12-minute quarters here, which is literally the only difference from college football, so all the stats are gonna be a little bit less,” Lawrence said. “My first game I had 120 yards, I didn’t play very well. But my last game I had 301 yards, and 310 yards or something like that in the last two games. So I’m definitely improving, but all of the numbers are going to be 20 percent lower, because you have 20 percent less time in the game, which has definitely been an adjustment.”  

Like Lawrence mentioned, while the fundamentals of the Japanese game are the same as the American football game that fans are used to watching, there are small differences between the traditional American game and the Japanese variety. The quarters are shorter — 12 minutes instead of 15. Teams play every two weeks instead of every week, a total of seven games, making for less contests but a slightly longer overall season. Teams in the X-League are owned by large corporations, not individuals, leading to team names like that of Lawrence’s Panasonic Impulse, or one of their rival teams, the IBM Big Blue. The X-League, which employs a system of relegation of underperforming teams to lower leagues that is not dissimilar to European soccer, only allows its teams to have four non-Japanese players on their roster. Like American football, there are cheerleaders, medium-sized to big stadiums, and at times, enthusiastic fans packing the stands. 

“The championship game is crazy,” Lawrence said, speaking from what he had heard from teammates and coaches. “It’s in Tokyo, in the Tokyo Dome, and they said every year it has 30-35,000 people there, and it’s crazy. But the regular season games, honestly, it’s similar to a USD game,” Lawrence said. “You have maybe two, three thousand people. But they’re involved, they’re engaged, and it makes it fun.”

Lawrence likened the level of competition to that of a top-level FCS school like USD, or even perhaps a smaller FBS program. 

“I would say the top four teams out here — us and three other teams — are the equivalent of high, high level FCS football, or low level FBS football. We played North Dakota State, San Diego State, UC Davis, Princeton, Harvard, all those teams. The talent out here — the top Japanese players — is similar to (those schools).”

But still, in the midst of all these differences in language, culture, rules, and structure, the 23-year-old quarterback finds himself in a strikingly familiar football situation as he and his team near the midpoint of their season. The Impulse, like USD’s football team, are consistently competitive, almost always at or around the top of their division, which is the highest of professional football in Japan. Lawrence has taken every snap of every game as quarterback, just as he did during nearly all his time as a Torero. And just like he did in San Diego, he will do his best to lead his team to a championship, a feat that the Impulse have not accomplished since 2015. With three wins and just one loss to begin the season, just one game back of the first place Obic Seagulls, it appears that Panasonic and Lawrence could be well on their way.

“We have the second-most championships in the history of the league,” Lawrence said. “We won it four years ago, and then the past three years we made it to the semifinals. So we’re always a top-four team, and that’s kind of the expectation this year, to make it to the championship and win it.”

Lawrence isn’t the only Torero to have recently continued their playing career overseas. USD men’s basketball alums Olin Carter III and Tyler Williams signed with teams in Spain and the country of Georgia earlier this year. To Lawrence, it isn’t a coincidence that so many former USD athletes are able to find success in new opportunities abroad.

“I don’t know if other sports use this but — (USD head football) Coach Lindsey would always talk about, ‘the USD guy,’” Lawrence said. “And that’s the kind of football players we wanted, the kind of teammates we wanted. The hard-working, smart, USD guy. And I think that if you have this many athletes playing across the world, it not only shows that it’s a competitive sports school, but it also shows that it instills values for diversity and appreciating other cultures and other lifestyles. Being brave and being courageous and being able to take that step, I think it says so many good things about USD and about USD Athletics.”

Lawrence is honest about what he hopes to get out of his own time abroad in Osaka. Among many things, he views it as a stepping stone, a stint that he hopes will pave the way for a future opportunity in North America, should he continue to perform at a high level with the Impulse.

“I’ve been trying to prove myself every step of the way,” Lawrence said. “And just keep doing that, and just keep doing everything I have. Just being okay with where the chips may fall, and be okay with knowing that I gave it everything I had. The goal is to play football at the highest level that I can, and if that’s the NFL, then it’s the NFL. I just want to play the most competitive football that I can play.”

When it’s all said and done, though, his journey to Osaka may be bigger than football for him, bigger than the NFL, the CFL, or the X-League. Because as focused as Lawrence is on succeeding at the task at hand in Japan, a keen sense of perspective has left him with a more powerful takeaway from this chapter of his playing career. 

“I just looked at it as a great opportunity, not only to keep playing football — because it’s high-level football out here — not only to be able to keep doing that, but to find out more about myself. I had wished that I had gone away to college, but even then, going away to college, you’re still with people who speak English, you’re still with people who have the same interests as you, grew up in similar lifestyles as you. But when you go 6,000 miles away … I think that was just a good opportunity to find out more about myself, and find out what I want in terms of life, relationships, what I want in terms of a career. Finding out more about myself has been the biggest blessing and the biggest takeaway from this. Obviously I get to keep playing football, but I get to do something that really will change me, and I think benefit me as a person.”

That sense of perspective, however, hasn’t dulled Lawrence’s notoriously competitive spirit. Not one bit. 

“I had a nice touchdown run in our second week,” Lawrence said with a chuckle. “There haven’t been any crazy comebacks or anything like that, but I had a nice touchdown run, and a few people back home said I looked fast. That meant a lot to me. I got a lot of crap (in the past) for not being a runner, or not being an athletic quarterback. So for some of those guys to swallow their pride and say that I looked like a dual threat, that really made my day.”

Dual threat or not, it’s clear that Lawrence will relish his opportunity in Japan the rest of the way, both on and off the field. The X-League’s season and postseason runs through January, so the quarterback will be abroad for the foreseeable future. But whenever it may be that Anthony Lawrence returns to San Diego, it will be with a new wealth of experience in both football and life.

Fans with a little bit of creativity and access to Google Translate can watch the live streams (the titles are in Japanese, but Google Chrome translates automatically) of the rest of Lawrence and the Impulse’s games this season by searching “X League Official” on YouTube and selecting streams with “Panasonic Impulse” in the title.