CLEMSON — In a Top 10 matchup against Miami in 2020, no one expected DJ Uiagalelei to enter the game when he did.
Clemson had taken its first possession straight down the field and made a statement about how things were going to be against this Hurricanes team that was supposed to be good.
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Trevor Lawrence was at the controls, and it felt like more ass-kicking would have to take place before the California kid trotted onto the field with the score 7-0.
But there he came, in the middle of Clemson’s second possession, replacing Lawrence.
Her ran a power play for 14 yards, lowering a shoulder that he would injure on the play. Next came a deep ball for Frank Ladson that was incomplete, and back in came Lawrence.
Lawrence took care of the rest in this 42-17 dismantling, but the insertion of Uiagalelei was a fascinating little sequence. The coaches would say later that they wanted to give Miami’s defense something to think about in the presence of this massive, big-armed weapon behind Lawrence.
The snapshot comes to mind now as we’re assessing how the coaches might handle the quarterback situation moving forward.
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From the first 60 minutes of football in 2022, we know Uiagalelei looks to have improved on a largely miserable 2021 campaign. We know there’s also still work needed in protecting the football, and in moving more quickly through the pre- and post-snap process.
We know his backup, Cade Klubnik, was a breath of fresh air in a brief garbage-time stint while quickly leading the backups down the field for a touchdown. We also know that’s a small sample size. But not small enough to keep him from being a bigger part of the conversation moving forward.
And that’s where the 2020 snapshot comes into relevance, at least for the premise of this writing.
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Dabo Swinney has said himself that the current situation is less like 2014 (Cole Stoudt trying to hold off Deshaun Watson) and 2018 (Kelly Bryant trying to hold off Lawrence), and more like 2020.
That’s the year they wanted to sprinkle in Uiagalelei in hopes of getting him ready for the post-Lawrence era. It’s when Lawrence of course became sick with COVID and had to sit out the Boston College and Notre Dame games, during which Uiagalelei looked like yet another in a growing line of generational Clemson quarterbacks.
The crucial and obvious difference between 2020 and now: Clemson doesn’t have the best player in college football taking the snaps. There was never any question that year that Lawrence was the best option.
It could well be that the reason Swinney is using the 2020 comparison is to bolster Uiagalelei’s confidence. He has had the guy’s back all offseason, parts of which were consumed with the outside idea that Uiagalelei was a hopeless cause after his shocking dip last year.
It could well be that Swinney legitimately believes Uiagalelei is headed for a grand rebound from 2021 and will come to look a lot more like the guy who started those two games in 2020.
It could be a mix of both.
Before we go any further, some opinions on this have taken the shape of most opinions quickly — sports, politics, whatever — in this prickly, come-at-me-bro world.
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As in, people become married to their takes. There’s not much room for middle ground, or the idea that the most recent event isn’t the best thing ever, the worst thing ever, or the most UNPRECEDENTED thing ever.
Thus, unfortunately, polarization has quickly infected some of this quarterback discussion after a mere one game.
Fortunately, it doesn’t appear to have remotely infected the quarterback room. The camaraderie among all the quarterbacks was apparent to everyone during the game, and today Klubnik’s words seemed far more than lip service when he said there’s zero tension within the position group.
“I think quarterbacks will always get way too much praise, and way too much hate. What he’s been able to do in the last eight months since I’ve been here, and how people were talking about him last season, it’s been super awesome to see how much he’s worked. And it shows, definitely. I wasn’t here last season, but just how far he’s come in the last eight months — he’s a grinder, and it’s been very encouraging.”
If the roles were reversed and Klubnik made some of the third-down plays Uiagalelei made with his arm and feet, some folks would be using that as ammunition for their position that Klubnik is the next great thing and needs to start right now.
In that respect it’s human to feel for Uiagalelei right now. He just showed evidence of real progress, though again not without flaws, and the Cade Train is full speed ahead in the court of some public opinion. Klubnik can do no wrong, and DJ can do no right.
Heck, all this clamor might not be fair to Klubnik himself. Yes, he looked really good and the offense seemed to get a lift from him. He seemed to have no pause in trying to muscle throws into tight coverage, which countered Uiagalelei’s hesitation in pulling the trigger. It’s reasonable to think what Clemson needs right now is more a median range between the two extremes.
But on that topic of Klubnik providing a perceptible lift in garbage time: We can’t help but think back to 2014 when Stoudt was getting most of the snaps but Watson was coming in relatively early.
You could feel the lift when he came in. The body language from everyone was just different, and it foretold the inevitability that Watson was going to be the guy in time.
We have no idea if the same script will unfold this time. As we’ve said, it’s not fair to Klubnik to compare him to two of the greatest quarterbacks the college game has ever known — at least not right now. It’s not fair to say the DJ of 2020 will never return — at least not right now.
But did Klubnik show enough to merit putting him in with the starters instead of the backups? To see if that same lift, that same body language, comes from the front-line guys?
It’s a delicate question and situation, for sure. But with Clemson’s next 120 minutes of football against teams it should overwhelm, that’s a lot of opportunity to see what Klubnik can do when everything is real and everyone around him is the best Clemson has.
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We’ll all learn more about both quarterbacks, and it’s hard to see how Clemson would be worse off for Klubnik getting more meaningful snaps.
Uiagalelei did enough in the opener to be the starter moving forward. Klubnik did enough to have the opportunity to show us more.
That seems fair. It seems like a reasonable middle ground here in the middle of a profoundly unpredictable, evolving situation.
And it’s worth reminding: If this situation is indeed most similar to 2020, on the second series in a Top 10 matchup against Miami the coaches put the freshman backup in.
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