A lineman from a nearby Power Five school who recently entered the transfer portal could pique Clemson’s interest for multiple reasons.
Clay Webb, who spent the last three seasons at Georgia, is looking for a new home. A former five-star recruit, Webb will almost certainly draw plenty of suitors looking for immediate help on the interior of the offensive line, which may be Clemson’s most pressing need heading into the 2022 season.
If the Tigers had to play a game today, rising senior Will Putnam, a converted guard, would likely take the field with the rest of the offense as the starting center. While Putnam earned praise from coaches for his performance at his new position this spring, head coach Dabo Swinney said before the spring started that the team would actively pursue a center in the transfer portal this offseason.
Swinney confirmed those intentions following Clemson’s spring game over the weekend, though he reiterated it would have to be the right fit.
“We’re not going to just take a guy to take a guy,” Swinney said. “It’s got to be right, but we certainly are going to evaluate that between now and May.”
But Clemson is one program that has already tried to fit Webb into its plans once before.
A native of Oxford, Alabama, Webb was rated by 247Sports as the No. 1 center nationally and the No. 2 overall recruit in Alabama in the 2019 recruiting cycle. The Tigers heavily recruited the 6-foot-3, 290-pounder then. So did in-state SEC schools Alabama and Auburn (among others) before all lost out to Georgia, where things didn’t go exactly as planned for Webb.
He played in just five games for the Bulldogs as a reserve, getting some of his snaps at guard. Another former blue-chip prospect, redshirt freshman Sedrick Van Pran, passed him on the depth chart this past season, starting all 15 games at center for the defending national champions.
With three years of eligibility left (including a COVID year), Webb figures to be looking for a place where he can make more of an immediate impact. At Clemson, he could also help keep the offensive line from playing so many musical chairs.
Clemson already tried the guard-playing-center experiment last season with mixed results. The Tigers moved Matt Bockhorst there to try to fill the void left by the departed Cade Stewart, but that lasted just a handful of games before Clemson slid Bockhorst back to guard and went with Hunter Rayburn and Mason Trotter at center.
Trotter is the only one of those three still on the roster, but he will miss most if not all of next season, which is why Putnam made the move this spring. Redshirt freshman Ryan Linthicum also took reps at center in the spring game, but the fact that Clemson is shopping the portal suggests the Tigers want to add plug-and-play type of help. Bringing in an immediate contributor at the position would allow Putnam to stay in his more natural spot at right guard, where’s been the starter for the last two seasons.
Much like three years ago, Webb will be a hot commodity as one of the top interior linemen in the portal. But it could be a match that’s mutually beneficial for Webb and the Tigers should Clemson decide to pursue — and land — him this time around.
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