During the Championship Drive: College Football Rewind show that aired Sunday on ESPN, the network’s Sam Acho, Heather Dinich and Trevor Matich discussed Dabo Swinney’s decision to replace starting quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei with freshman Cade Klubnik in the second half of Clemson’s eventual 27-21 win over Syracuse on Saturday at Death Valley.
“To me, that move, it was a great coaching move — do what you need to do to win the game,” Dinich said. “But to me, it opens the door to say can Clemson win a national title with DJ U? Are they good enough? I don’t know.”
“He’s got a better chance than I would playing quarterback for them, and everything’s relative,” Matich added. “Klubnik is very talented, but I don’t know that he’s ready to implement the entire playbook yet.”
Uiagalelei, who entered Saturday’s game with 17 touchdown passes and only two interceptions, threw a pair of picks while also losing a fumble that was returned 90 yards for a touchdown.
Klubnik, the former five-star prospect from Austin, Texas, went just 2-of-4 passing for 19 yards in relief of Uiagalelei but helped ignite the Tigers’ offense while doing his part to rally the team from an 11-point deficit in the comeback victory.
Despite Uiagalelei’s struggles and subsequent benching, Swinney backed the junior following the game, saying he remains the Tigers’ starter and the team’s leader.
“It’s interesting that Dabo Swinney always talks in terms of competition, that even his stars need to earn their position in practice and in games every single day,” Matich said. “He doesn’t talk about DJ U like that. He says he’s our guy, that we sat him down at halftime but he’s coming back — he’s our guy.”
Acho likes Swinney saying that Clemson is sticking with Uiagalelei as the starter.
“I do like that move though, I really do,” he said. “Because you could say hey, he had a bad day, let him continue to be the starter and let Klubnik continue to learn as opposed to making a quarterback switch now and then it doesn’t go well.”
Added Matich: “That would be the worst thing because then instead of having Klubnik come off the bench, they’d have to make him the starter. Yay, a week of social media, and then oops, we made a mistake, sit back down kid. That’s something they should avoid. And by the way, DJ U is still getting better. He had a bad day.”
Overall, in eight games this season, Uiagalelei has completed 64.1 percent of his passes for 1,803 yards and 17 touchdowns with four interceptions, to go with 350 rushing yards and four more scores on the ground.
Klubnik has played in five games this season, completing 9 of 19 passes for 85 yards and a touchdown.
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