Over his last several games, Clemson’s 35-12 win over Furman on Saturday at Memorial Stadium is “probably” the most comfortable D.J. Uiagalelei has looked, according to his offensive coordinator, Brandon Streeter.
After watching the film, Streeter deduced that the junior quarterback still had a couple of times that he could have done a better job in the pocket, but ultimately it was an improvement from the first week.
“That’s what I told the whole team after the game was just the only statistics I’m interested in is winning and getting better,” Streeter said during his media availability Monday. “If we can do those two things, then we can be a heck of an offense and a heck of a team. Let’s just focus on those things and focus on being inside out.”
“But yeah, I think his pocket presence improved dramatically from the first game to the second game and that comes with confidence,” Streeter added.
Uiagalelei had to rediscover that confidence after his first season as a starter.
With that, he put in the necessary work in the offseason, which culminated in Saturday’s performance. Never has he had a more efficient day through the air in his first three years as a Tiger. Uiagalelei finished 21 of 27 passing for 231 yards and a pair of scores, continuing his strong start to the season in the accuracy department.
“He has just number one, put the work in,” Streeter said. “One of the things of encouragement for him last week was ‘Just lean on the hard work that you put in,’ and that should give you confidence because he works harder than anybody else. I mean, he has never compromised his work ethic at all. That’s paying off. He’s learned a lesson that work ethic and being consistent with your work ethic has allowed him to gain confidence.
“You see the confidence just through how he’s played these last two games. Still, not perfect by any means, but he is definitely gaining that confidence and playing faster and just confidence in the guys he’s playing around. And so, that’s a big positive for us.”
So with that, what are some of the steps forward that Uiagalelei can take after his first two games?
“Well, as coaches you’re always looking for improvement and he’ll probably tell you the same thing,” Streeter said. “He’s still probably gotta get better at several things. The biggest thing for any quarterback is consistency. How consistent can you be? And, he’s put two games together that are solid games, not perfect, but he can gain confidence from those games. Now, he can really go clean up some of the little details that we were just talking about to make his performance even that much better.”
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