During his Zoom conference call with reporters on Monday evening, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney elaborated on why he pulled DJ Uiagalelei from Saturday’s game against Syracuse and replaced the Tigers’ starting quarterback with true freshman Cade Klubnik in the eventual 27-21 victory over the Orange at Death Valley.
“The biggest thing is, and that’s why I made the change, DJ had three turnovers — I wasn’t going to give him a chance to have four,” Swinney said. “That wasn’t going to happen.”
Prior to being replaced by Klubnik on Clemson’s fourth drive of the third quarter, Uiagalelei had just thrown his second interception of the game on the Tigers’ previous possession. He also turned the ball over on a fumble that was returned 90 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter.
Swinney compared Uiagalelei’s performance against Syracuse to a baseball team’s ace pitcher serving up home runs, and Swinney wasn’t going to allow the Orange to hit a fourth homer off Uiagalelei.
“So again, sometimes, like I said the other day, when your ace is on the mound — we’ve got baseball going on right now — there’s an expectation, right,” Swinney said. “Everybody puts your best guy on the mound for you, you have a certain expectation. But even the best of the best, all of a sudden they hit a couple home runs on you, you just need to change it up. Again, I wasn’t going to let them hit four home runs. We’d already given up three.”
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