The Low Point for Clemson’s Cade Klubnik
For Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik, the nadir of his college football journey came after a Week 9 loss to NC State last year. The Tigers were sitting at a disappointing 4-4, a record that guaranteed the end of a remarkable streak of 12 consecutive seasons with 10 or more wins. Klubnik, once a highly-touted recruit, found himself shouldering the blame for what many saw as the collapse of a dynasty.
At that moment, it felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Klubnik’s journey at Clemson had been anything but smooth. It was a roller-coaster ride that included a dazzling debut in mop-up duty, a delayed takeover of the offense during a thrilling ACC championship game win, a bowl loss, and now this setback.
In a different era, such ups and downs might have been considered part of the natural development process for a quarterback. As Clemson coach Dabo Swinney often says, it takes time “in the crock-pot” for a quarterback to mature into a superstar. However, in today’s fast-paced world of college football, patience is a rare commodity. Coaches and quarterbacks alike are often unwilling to endure the slow simmer of development, and Klubnik was no exception to this narrative.
“It was tough,” Klubnik admitted to ESPN. “I had a lot of people in my ear after last season asking if I wanted to leave.”
In today’s college football landscape, transferring is often seen as the preferred path for players facing adversity. The 2022 recruiting class, of which Klubnik was a standout, is a testament to this trend. This year’s College Football Playoff will feature four starting quarterbacks from that class: Klubnik, Drew Allar from Penn State, Kevin Jennings from SMU, and Maddux Madsen from Boise State. Gunner Stockton from Georgia could join them, depending on the health of starter Carson Beck. But these players are the exceptions.
Among the top 30 quarterback recruits from that class, only four ended the regular season as starters, and more than two-thirds have transferred. Klubnik and Allar are the clear success stories, but even they have faced their share of criticism and setbacks. Their presence in the playoffs is nothing short of miraculous.
Klubnik resisted the temptation to transfer, thanks in part to Clemson’s five-game winning streak to close the 2023 season and his own gradual improvement. However, it was his relationship with Swinney that played a pivotal role in his decision to stay.
“I never had any doubt with Cade,” Swinney said. “If I did, I would’ve gone and taken a big-time portal guy. But I believe in Cade. He’s a worker, he’s gifted, he’s smart. He deserves all the credit because he’s really grown.”
Swinney emphasized that this is how a quarterback’s story should unfold. Quarterbacks are always a work in progress, and Swinney knows how rare it is to witness someone like Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence rapidly ascend the growth curve.
After the 2023 season, Swinney had a candid conversation with Klubnik. His message was simple: while the season wasn’t up to par, he had unwavering faith that Klubnik would become something special at Clemson.
“After a season you wouldn’t ever dream of having,” Klubnik said, “to have somebody like that come and tell you he still believes in you and trusts in you, that means a lot.”
Klubnik stayed, improved, and although he hasn’t yet reached the heights of Lawrence, he threw 33 touchdowns and led Clemson back to the College Football Playoff for the first time since Lawrence’s departure. Klubnik’s journey isn’t just a success story; it’s a testament to the value of perseverance.
Finding Strength in Adversity
After Clemson’s Week 1 loss to Georgia in September, Klubnik faced a familiar sense of dread as he checked his phone. In the past, this would have been a painful experience, but he had already deleted all social media apps to avoid the toxic feedback loop. The silence was sometimes worse than the criticism. After a good game, he would receive an outpouring of praise, but after losses, there was often nothing.
This time, there were just five messages, all from friends or family who didn’t care about the outcome of the game. Klubnik learned an important lesson from this experience.
“Find your circle,” Klubnik said. “You listen to the four or five people. Those are the people that are there for you in the hard times.”
For star recruits, the pressure to perform is immense, and the temptation to transfer is ever-present. The struggles are often attributed to a bad fit, coaching, or environment. The allure of more money, less pressure, and greener pastures on the other side of the transfer portal is strong.
For coaches, the pressure to win immediately is equally intense. Living with a quarterback still developing might mean risking their job before seeing the results of their efforts.
“It’s hard to have patience, because you have so much noise,” Swinney said. “It’s a lot harder than it used to be. Everybody wants to win yesterday, and unfortunately with quarterback play, it’s developmental.”
Swinney’s former defensive coordinator, Brent Venables, experienced this paradox at Oklahoma this season. The Sooners finished 6-6 in 2024, partly due to injuries, but the criticism fell on the coach and his quarterbacks.
Venables started the season with sophomore Jackson Arnold, a former five-star recruit, then switched to freshman Michael Hawkins Jr., before returning to Arnold, who ultimately entered the transfer portal. Venables worked tirelessly to recalibrate the message amid constant criticism.
“Well before the season started, you were talking about these moments,” Venables said of the team’s offensive struggles. “We spend a lot of time throughout the year developing toughness and mindset. And every week you have to start completely over with your process. And if you do it the right way, [improvement] is usually more incremental than not.”
Incremental improvements can be a tough sell when the expectations of immediate success mix with the temptations of an easier path elsewhere.
Klubnik admits he was unprepared for the wave of criticism he faced during the 2023 campaign. It was the first real failure in his career, which included three state championships in high school and an ACC championship game MVP in his first significant action at Clemson. Suddenly, talent and hard work weren’t enough to guarantee results, and the little voice in his head that worried he didn’t belong was amplified by countless outside voices urging him to leave.
“Just because you’re not listening to the criticism doesn’t mean you don’t hear it,” Klubnik said. “Those words can definitely be heavy.”
There were times last season when Klubnik didn’t want to go to class or go out to eat. He was the face of Clemson’s football program, and in a small college town, there was nowhere to hide.
Looking back, though, Klubnik is grateful for the experience.
“Pain like that, it does something to people,” he said. “But it can make you better. I’m thankful I went through stuff like that because I came out better on the other side.”
To fail is to learn. The problem, of course, is that the lessons are only fully realized long after the losses are added to the standings.
Nobody Told Allar to Stay Quiet
Nobody told Drew Allar to stay quiet. In fact, his coaches encouraged him to put his own stamp on Penn State’s offense last year, but that wasn’t his nature. He had spent his first year on campus learning under incumbent Sean Clifford, a four-year starter. With Clifford, it all looked like a well-oiled machine, so when Allar took over, he figured it was his job to conform to the status quo.
It mostly worked. Penn State went 10-3 in 2023, and Allar threw 25 touchdowns with just two interceptions. But in the big moments against Ohio State and Michigan, when the Nittany Lions needed something extra special from the QB, there was only more of the same.
It was only later, after Penn State brought in new coordinator Andy Kotelnicki to rejuvenate the offense last offseason, did Allar understand that he had gotten the math backward, that he needed to help tailor the offense, not conform to it.
“It’s about experience,” Allar said. “You can talk about development all you want, and learning behind somebody, but experience is the biggest thing. You gain more perspective on the things you need to be on top of, on communication with the staff, about being open and honest with them.”
He had heard all that before he took his first snaps at QB1, but it took a year of living it to really understand.
And yet learning on the job is a luxury afforded to too few elite QB prospects.
- Of 2022’s top 30 QBs ranked by 247’s recruiting composite, just seven have at least 10 starts under their belts, three years into their college careers.
- Of those seven, just two — Klubnik and Allar — remain at their original school.
- Nine have avoided the transfer portal, and of that group, four have either one or zero starts to their name.
Some of those top-30 QBs — Maalik Murphy, Walker Howard, Nate Johnson — are in the portal for a second time. Combined, the top 30 have a Total QBR of just 56.0, are completing less than 60% of their throws, and average just more than 6 yards per dropback. More than a dozen still haven’t started a game.
There is no simple explanation for why the 2022 class is so rife with bad evaluations, but there are ample possibilities. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted critical junior seasons for this class and kept coaches from doing serious in-person recruiting. The extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA because of COVID also resulted in a wealth of veteran QBs in their fifth, sixth, or seventh years retaining starting jobs, which relegated younger QBs to the bench.
Name, image, and likeness took over the sport after many members of the 2022 class were committed, and the opening of the transfer portal at the same time made it easy for QBs to leave in search of more money, more playing time, or more acclaim. The bottom line for the Class of ’22 — and likely, many more recruiting classes to come — is the odds are slim that more than a handful will find success with the team they sign with out of high school.
“If the kid’s not great as a freshman and the head coach is under a lot of pressure to win right now, you move on to the next guy,” Swinney said. “So there’s been this mass deal of one-year guys. Go get a guy that’s got a ton of experience.”
It’s the catch-22 of modern QB development: Every coach wants someone with experience, but getting experience requires a coach to live with the ups and downs of a young quarterback.
It’s perhaps not surprising then that, looking back at the Class of 2022, the biggest stars aside from Klubnik and Allar were largely overlooked on the recruiting trail.
Iowa State’s Rocco Becht was ESPN’s No. 36 pocket passer. Jayden Maiava from USC was No. 23. Josh Hoover from TCU was No. 24. Fernando Mendoza, a two-year starter at Cal before entering the portal this month, was No. 72.
Then there’s Madsen (No. 56) and Jennings (unranked), who’ll start playoff games alongside Klubnik and Allar this week, despite being largely passed over as recruits.
Those guys had the luxury of low expectations, which afforded them time to learn their craft without the constant pressure to perform immediately. When mistakes happened, they were expected. When success finally came, it was a surprise. Jennings, who played high school football in Texas at the same time as Klubnik, had a college experience that looks virtually nothing like what Clemson’s QB endured.
“Patience is not a good word in our world when it comes to coaches, fans, administrations,” Swinney said. “Sometimes the answer is right there, you just have to have some patience.”
After Clemson Lost to South Carolina
After Clemson lost to South Carolina in the regular-season finale, a game that could have ended the Tigers’ playoff hopes, Klubnik slumped into his car and cried. Losing is never easy, even with two years of starts under his belt.
But then, a few hundred miles away, another former blue-chip recruit who had fallen from grace at Ohio State was engineering a miraculous comeback in Syracuse.
Kyle McCord has seen both sides of the modern QB’s story, proof the portal can be a curse or a blessing.
A year ago, he won 11 of 12 games as Ohio State’s starter. He posted an 83.8 Total QBR, the second-best mark in the Big Ten, threw 24 touchdown passes to just six interceptions, and had more than 3,100 passing yards.
“When you’re a young quarterback, you care a lot about what people have to say about your performance, but you play great one week and they love you and you don’t the next week and you’re terrible,” McCord said.
After a loss to Michigan at the end of the 2023 season, most Ohio State fans thought the latter.
So McCord was shown the door. Ohio State opted to replace him with a transfer: Will Howard from Kansas State. (Interesting side note: The Buckeyes chose Howard over junior Devin Brown, ESPN’s No. 4 pocket passer in the Class of 2022, who entered the portal this month.)
McCord landed at Syracuse, a school desperately in need of a veteran. In 2024, he threw for more than 4,300 yards with 29 touchdowns, including three in a Week 14 win over Miami that opened the door for Clemson to make one last push for the College Football Playoff and gave Klubnik another chance to live up to all those expectations.
“Failing’s not fun, but it teaches you a lot,” McCord said. “I’ve learned the most from my failures. It’s easy to be a quarterback when you’re winning, and everything’s going great, but the moment it hits the fan and things are going south and you have to be the guy that calms the locker room down, that’s not easy to do at all.”
Klubnik Endured the Ups and Downs
Klubnik endured the ups and downs of 2023, stumbled in the opener this season, then righted the ship to get Clemson into the College Football Playoff.
Allar stuck it out at Penn State. The Nittany Lions hired the right offensive coordinator. Now, they’re in the field, too.
There’s probably little use in searching for a blueprint in those journeys beyond a simple understanding that most players get better with age and experience.
“Just going through it, you learn from those mistakes you made,” Allar said. “You gain perspective.”
Sometimes, the portal is the best path to figuring things out. Sometimes, a coach can’t wait for the seeds planted today to blossom when he also faces the threat of being fired. And sometimes, on increasingly rare occasions, there’s a player like Klubnik or Allar, who sticks it out just long enough for the pieces to finally click into place at the same school where the journey began.
The point, perhaps, is that the job is hard, and no one has the perfect blueprint. It’s just about knowing the right guy when you see him.
“I wasn’t where I wanted to be last year,” Klubnik said, “and I’m not where I want to be this year. I still see things I want to get better at.”
Originally Written by: David Hale
