Clemson football could find itself in an unfamiliar position for the 2022 recruiting class.
Over the last decade, Clemson football has been able to walk into most schools and most living rooms and sign the football player they truly want – Deshaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence, Christian Wilkins, Bryan Bresee Myles Murphy to name a few.
However, that isn’t the case for the 2022 class and those within the Allen N Reeves football operations building may go into panic mode very soon.
According to 247Sports, Clemson football has offered just 57 players around the country. Of those 57 players, 14 have committed to other schools – four of those are to Clemson. Cade Klubnik, Collin Sadler, Adam Randall, and Blake Miller – all highly regarded four-star prospects.
Of the 43 prospects, there are 10 five-star players and Clemson is not the front runner for any of them, a matter of fact, not a single 247 expert such as Anna Hickey has any of them as Clemson football leans. While there is still a long time before the early signing day period in December, this is still an uncomfortable position and one that isn’t favorable.
Over the last five days, Clemson has lost both five-star athlete Malaki Starks and four-star linebacker Jalon Walker to UGA. Walker had been a Clemson lean for the vast majority of his recruitment before rumors started swirling in the middle of the week that UGA had overtaken Clemson.
On the bright side, we all know that not everyone is meant to be part of the Clemson family and it takes a special young man to come to play for a program that stresses team first and not personal accomplishments – which is hard for a lot of the inner circles of these young men to grasp.
Head coach Dabo Swinney’s track record has shown, those who do decide to become part of the family, leave Clemson in a much better place and grow and develop in ways that they never imagined possible.
While it is easy to look at the recruiting side as bleak right now, we have to remember that the visit moratorium is going to be lifted by the NCAA very soon and this will unleash Swinney’s greatest recruiting tool – Clemson itself.
Once some of these guys can get on campus, see classrooms, facilities and create relationships with the current roster, the current Clemson dry spell will assuredly come to a fruitful end.