During an appearance on Packer and Durham with Mark Packer and Wes Durham on ACC Network this week, ESPN analyst Tom Luginbill discussed Clemson’s quarterback situation following the Orange & White Spring Game last Saturday at Death Valley.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said after the spring game that rising junior D.J. Uiagalelei, who is competing with freshman Cade Klubnik, is “definitely” the Tigers’ starting quarterback coming out of the spring.
“Remember, Kelly Bryant was still going to be the starter, too, coming out of spring, and I had that spring game,” Luginbill said, referring to the spring game in 2018 – the year Lawrence eventually supplanted Bryant as Clemson’s starter and ultimately led the Tigers to a national championship as a true freshman.
“That was the day that Trevor Lawrence, on I think his second play of the day, throws a 55-yard touchdown, and it was lights-out, party’s over.”
In this year’s spring game, Uiagalelei went 17-of-36 passing for 175 yards and threw an interception, while Klubnik completed 15-of-23 passes for 106 yards and a touchdown.
Luginbill doesn’t read much into Clemson’s spring game performances considering the amount of injuries and attrition the Tigers dealt with this spring.
“Listen, I think with Clemson’s spring game, you’ve got to really take it with a grain of salt,” he said. “That was a skeleton crew. That was not a complete football team. That was not a team that had their best personnel on the field. I think with spring games, you can take that with 10 cents, you get a cup of coffee with it and then just leave it at that.”
Still, Luginbill – who was the sideline reporter for Clemson’s Cheez-It Bowl victory over Iowa State last December, when Uiagalelei went 21-of-32 passing for 187 yards with an interception – believes Uiagalelei must improve from an accuracy standpoint if he is going to fend off Klubnik and keep the starting job.
“D.J. Uiagalelei – and I had their bowl game — he is gonna have to become more efficient with his accuracy,” Luginbill said. “It’s really about his accuracy, and I think so much of Cade Klubnik is, that’s kind of what his game is. Is he going to be looking physically like D.J. Uiagalelei? No. But what he does is he puts the ball where it needs to be when it needs to be there, and at the end of the day, that will eventually trump physical attributes.”
Luginbill says Swinney was smart to name Uiagalelei the starter exiting the spring, but added that Uiagalelei must be much better than he was in 2021, when he completed 55.6 percent of his passes with more interceptions (10) than touchdown pass (nine).
“So, I think it’s smart to say OK, D.J.’s our starter,” Luginbill said. “Yeah, because you want him going into the summer workouts confident. You want him going into the fall camp confident as the leader of the football team. But eventually, eventually, he’s going to have to produce at a level that was significantly higher than he did a year ago despite the fact that they won 10 games.”
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