Clemson football: Tigers need to get elite 4-star safety on campus

The Clemson football coaching staff has been rather slow-moving on prospects in the 2022 recruiting class as they’ve waited for visits to be reinstated before dishing out a ton of offers.

In total, Clemson football has issued just 61 total offers.

The Tigers are looking to take one safety in the class of 2022 and they’ve taken their time in evaluations so far at the position. The first target seemed to be 5-star Malaki Starks, but he committed to Georgia earlier this spring and that left the Tigers back to the drawing board.

As we inch closer to the summer, the recruiting board for Clemson football is starting to become clearer

Clemson has offered just five players at the safety position and two are already committed.

That leave three names in the current offer list:

• 4-star Zion Branch
• 4-star Sherrod Covil Jr.
• 4-star Xavier Nwankpa

Though the Tigers have been slow-moving in their recruitment at the position, all three of these prospects have still left the door open, at least to an extent.

That being said, it doesn’t seem all that likely that Clemson nabs Branch- who already has three official visits set this summer- but the Tigers still could have a seat at the table with Covil Jr. and Nwankpa.

Nwankpa just announced his final group of seven and Clemson was included along with Iowa, LSU, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Texas A&M and Arizona State.

The Tigers are certainly not in the lead among those seven programs, but the key for Clemson will be getting him on campus sooner rather than later.

Nwankpa, who is rated as the No. 5 safety in the nation according to 247 Sports’ Composite Player Rankings, is already set to take a visit to Ohio State later this summer. He is being heavily recruited by the Buckeyes, but there’s no reason to believe that the Tigers couldn’t become involved if they wanted to.

The key will be making a commitment one way or another in terms of recruitment and getting him on campus sooner rather than later if they do choose to place him as their top target on the board at the position.