In the Dabo Swinney era of Clemson football, the distinguishing characteristics that has turned the South Carolina school from a regional power in the ACC to a national power has been a suffocating defense led by extremely talented defensive lines and athletic cornerbacks that can be exceptional playmakers on the perimeter.
Offensively, Clemson has been fortunate to be flanked by wide receivers who have been big-time playmakers, all-purpose running backs that can run to the outside, run receiving routes, and are powerful enough on the inside to make plays.
Additionally, the quarterbacks of the Dabo Swinney era have seemingly lived up to or exceeded the billing. Tajh Boyd, a three-time All-ACC quarterback, was a First Team All-American, set an Orange Bowl record with total yards in a game, and finished with the most yards and touchdowns by a Clemson quarterback finishing with 11,904 yards passing and 107 touchdowns.
Deshaun Watson, a Consensus All-American, won multiple Davey O’Brien and Manning Awards, and guided Clemson to its first national championship since 1981 in the 2016 College Football Playoff Final win over Alabama.
Trevor Lawrence, arguably the most hyped quarterback recruit since Terrelle Pryor, lived up to the hype in his three seasons at Clemson, guiding them to two College Football Playoff National Championship games, winning the 2018 championship. Lawrence was also a three-time All-ACC quarterback with a record of 34-2 as starter.
No other Clemson quarterback in their history is within 40 touchdown passes of these three. The standard set by this trio remains as high as it gets. Between the 2012 and 2020 seasons, the Clemson offense finished in the Top 20 in scoring offense and Top 25 in passing offense in seven of those nine seasons.
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During that stretch, the Clemson offense was coordinated by Chad Morris (2011-2014, co-coordinated by Jeff Scott and Tony Elliott between (2015-2019) with Elliott becoming the sole coordinator 2020-2021 before taking the Virginia head coach following the 2021 season.
Following the departure to the NFL for Lawrence after a College Football Playoff Semifinal loss to Ohio State, Elliott was tasked to mold the next five-star quarterback prodigy to reach Clemson in DJ Uiagalelei.
While Lawrence was quarantined due to the coronavirus, Clemson fans got a sneak peek for two games in Lawrence’s absence as Uiagalelei split games against Boston College and Notre Dame. In those two contests, he completed nearly 67% of his passes for 914 yards and nine total touchdowns (five passing, four rushing).
In the kickoff of the 2021 season, Elliott and Uiagalelei, full-time coordinator and quarterback respectively, entered a titanic clash with rival Georgia in Charlotte, NC, in a neutral site game. What transpired was a Georgia domination defensively. The Bulldogs surrendered a total of two rushing yards on 23 carries, and stifled “Big Cinco” all game. He barely completed 50% of his passes and was torched by a back-breaking 74-yard pick-six by Bulldog defender Christopher Smith.
Most ardent Clemson fans chalked up the 10-3 loss to Georgia as a defensive struggle against two elite teams evenly matched, but as the Clemson offense began to sputter in narrow underwhelming wins against Georgia Tech (14-8), Boston College (19-13), and against Syracuse (17-14). To say this was uninspiring to the fan base would be an understatement.
A second loss to NC State all but ended any chance of returning to the College Football Playoff for a seventh consecutive season, and a 27-17 loss at Pitt ended any chance of an ACC Championship.
Elliott, after turning down the Tennessee job following the 2020 season, took the University of Virginia following the 2021 season. Swinney turned in house to replace Elliott, looking to Brandon Streeter to assume the offensive coordinator role and try to maximize the five-star talent Uiagalelei had.
Streeter could be described as Clemson through and through. He was a quarterback for the Tigers between 1995 and 1999, starting his final two seasons and guided Clemson to a Peach Bowl berth. He returned to his alma mater as a graduate assistant between 2004 and 2005 and came back to Clemson a decade later as a quarterbacks coach, rising up the ranks as a recruiting coordinator, passing game coordinator, and finally offensive coordinator following the 2021 season.
2022 was a make or break for Uiagalelei. And eventually he simply never fully lived up to the five-star status he attained. He finished his Tigers career only completing 55.6% of his passes leading the two most lackluster offenses of the Swinney era.
With five-star quarterback Cade Klubnik, the fans had their Plan B already arriving on campus. From Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, Klubnik comes from same high school that produced Super Bowl MVP quarterbacks Drew Brees and Nick Foles,
While Uiagalelei’s play improved significantly from his abysmal 2021 season that saw his completion percentage improve from 55.6% to 62.1%, touchdown passes from nine to 22 (total touchdowns improve from 13 to 29), and fewer turnovers – the progress wasn’t enough to keep his job as Uiagalelei struggled to gain any traction in the ACC Championship against a North Carolina defense that was surrendering over 30 points per game it was Uiagalelei’s last stand for Clemson.
After Uiagalelei hit the transfer portal, Clemson struggled offensively in the Orange Bowl against Tennessee. The Vols did not miss a beat without star quarterback Hendon Hooker, who had torn his ACL, and bowl opt-outs wide receivers Cedric Tillman and Jalin Hyatt, yet still managed to score 31 points and move the ball, the Clemson offense may have outgained Tennessee 484 to 375, but the Tigers offense wasn’t vertically or physically on the ground explosive.
The lackluster performance forced Swinney to fire Streeter after one season.
Swinney commented on National Signing Day about Streeter, “Brandon Streeter is a first-class person. Streeter has represented Clemson in an unbelievable way. He and his wife are Clemson people. We give an award in Brandon’s honor, and we will continue to do that. He is a Clemson man. He did a fantastic job for the Clemson Tigers. He worked tirelessly to make us better, and he made us better. He coached Deshaun Watson for two years and recruited Trevor Lawrence. We had a change with Tony Elliott going to Clemson, and he earned the right to lead our offense. He did a great job. But I felt like it was the right time, and we weren’t quite where we needed to be. These are hard decisions, especially when you love the people that are involved. Brandon Streeter will land on his feet. He has a great, great future ahead. As I evaluated where we are, I felt like this was the right time with a new quarterback kind of coming in and taking the reins. It was also the right opportunity to hire Garrett (Riley). I am super excited about that and very, very grateful for Brandon Streeter, and hopefully, the Clemson fans will appreciate all that he did for the Clemson program.”
Looking to generate more explosive offense, Swinney turned to TCU offensive coordinator Garrett Riley to replace Streeter. Riley, who has been an offensive coordinator for three seasons, two at SMU (2020-2021) and TCU (2022), his Air Raid offenses averaged 38.6 points per game, nearly 300 yards passing per game, and 472 yards of total offense per game – all significantly better than the offensive numbers Clemson has put up during the same span.
Commenting on his five-star quarterback project, Riley said of Klubnik, “I’ve known of Cade and known Cade for probably about three years now, he’s very talented, but I just think, between the ears and the way he carries himself, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that’s kind of the magic of Cade Klubnik.”
Klubnik echoed similar sentiments on the Next Up Podcast with Adam Breneman, “I’m really excited about Coach Riley. He recruited me a little bit at SMU, and a local Texas guy also. So, we’ve talked almost every day so far since he’s been here, and we got to go to the Clemson-Duke basketball game…And we know so many people, just connections and stuff, we know so many people. Like one of my high school coaches, his son is one of Coach Riley’s righthand men, and Coach Riley actually bought my high school head coach’s haircut one time when they were both at the same barbershop. Like, we just both know so many people, and we’ve gotten along super well. I’m excited about what he’s going to bring. Clemson’s been really, really good for a long time now, and I’m excited, a new spark that he’s going to bring.”
Swinney spoke after National Signing Day and commented on how Riley will mesh and work with the rest of the Clemson staff, “There’s a lot of collaboration. We have a lot of good coaches here. We have to get on the same page. It starts with Garrett getting comfortable with what he wants to keep and what he wants to change. There are going to be certain things that he wants to learn here and help him. There’s going to be a fresh way that he wants to do certain things. Football is football. If you break it down, you’ll see a lot of similarities, to be honest. But how you do certain things, game-plan certain things, install those things and practice those things makes a difference? That’ll be his big task.”
While there seems to be an impatience on Swinney’s part to fix the offense, and fans beginning to have raised expectations considering for the better part of a decade they had elite offenses led by excellent quarterbacks, Swinney had an excellent perspective on where Clemson is as a program. “We’ve won three national championships in 127 years; the problem is that we’ve won two in the last seven, and that can create a loss of perspective. When you lose perspective, you lose your joy. That’s what has made Clemson unique and special is that this place has always had a lot of fun. It is not that we’ve been perfect every year, but we have enjoyed the journey. When we won the ACC championship in 2011, there were 5,000 people waiting for us to get off the bus. Now, nobody is there. It isn’t a big deal anymore. I think that is sad. Our program has never been better, but sometimes people can lose perspective. We’ve raised the bar.”
The bar has indeed been raised. This is why a quarterback with the pedigree of Cade Klubnik comes to Clemson. The standard is to win big games, conference championships, and national championships, sending quarterbacks to the NFL as Day 1 draft choices. Riley is a high-caliber coordinator who may be the most impactful coordinator hire Swinney has made since getting Brent Venables as defensive coordinator in 2012. The right ingredients are in place for Clemson to bounce back into the College Football Playoff. The only thing is all the men involved now have to prove it on the field.
