D.J. Uiagalelei received plenty of criticism for his performance last season, when he completed 55.6 percent of his passes for 2,246 yards and nine touchdowns with 10 interceptions in 13 starts, following his stellar freshman debut in 2020 when he threw for 781 yards and four touchdowns with no picks in two starts vs. Boston College and Notre Dame, while rushing for two more scores in those contests.
But in spite of the quarterback’s struggles in 2021, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney remains confident in Uiagalelei heading into this season and appreciates how the rising junior handled the way things went last year.
“He’d be the first one to tell you, hey, he’s got a lot he needs to go improve on and be better,” Swinney said Wednesday during his media availability prior to the Tigers’ first spring practice. “But he never made excuses, never pointed fingers, never did anything.”
Swinney put Uiagalelei’s sophomore struggles in the context of former Clemson star signal-callers Trevor Lawrence and Deshaun Watson earlier in their careers, saying that those generational talents weren’t perfect, either, and pointing out that Justyn Ross bailed Lawrence out with a spectacular one-handed catch at one juncture of the 2018 national championship victory over Alabama.
“I’ve never had a young quarterback that didn’t make mistakes,” Swinney said. “Deshaun, Trevor… the difference between Deshaun and Trevor was D.J.’s mistakes were magnified. We weren’t near as good around him as we were those other two dudes. But I promise you, they made plenty of mistakes. That was a terrible pass that Trevor threw to Justyn Ross in the national championship — terrible. But Justyn Ross reached back behind him and one-handed it, and everybody’s cheering. If he didn’t do that, everybody would have been booing Trevor.”
Swinney believes the adversity Uiagalelei faced a season ago will only benefit his development in the long run.
“The positive of that, of what D.J. went through last year, is it accelerated all the other stuff that has to come with being a great quarterback — his mental toughness, his leadership, his grit, his thick skin, just the will to win,” Swinney said. “All that stuff, I think, got accelerated through his experience this past year.”
Uiagalelei has dropped weight and is in great shape from a physical standpoint, and Swinney thinks the former five-star prospect is poised to have a strong junior season.
“He looks amazing,” Swinney said. “It’s been a long time since he’s been 240. I think he’s lost about 15, 16 pounds, and he looks great. It starts with him, and I think he’s going to have an amazing year. I really do. But the first thing is, he’s got to get better. There’s things he’s got to do. He took too many sacks. I can criticize him on some things that he’s got to do, but we’ve got to get better around him, and we will.”
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