Clemson Football: Wide receivers need to take next step in 2023

The 2023 season will start the Cade Klubnik era for Clemson Football. Klubnik shows promise, but he won’t be able to carry the team by himself.

The other units around him will need to step up their game. One group that will be key to Klubnik’s development will be the wide receivers.

These are the players who will be returning or joining the squad in 2023.

Juniors: Brannon Spector (RS), Will Taylor and Beaux Collins

Sophomores: Troy Stellato (RS), Adam Randall, and Antonio Williams

Freshmen: Cole Turner (RS), Ronan Hanafin, Noble Johnson, Misun Kelley

We don’t have an announcement from Ngata but I am assuming at this point that he will not be returning in 2023.

Thank you to Morgan Thomas for his roster graphics to make this part easy.

This is a unit with very little proven success. Antonio Williams led the team in 2022 with 56 receptions for 604 yards, which is a good start for a freshman campaign. He will need to take another step if he intends to lead the receivers back to the kind of respect they had in years past. He can’t rest on what he did as a freshman. To understand why, he needs to look no further than his teammate, Beaux Collins.

It’s hard to believe Collins will be a junior in 2023. His emergence as a freshman doesn’t seem that long ago. He only trailed Justyn Ross in receptions in 2021. He was off to a decent start in 2022 before injuries intervened.

Going into 2022, Collins was seen as the best wide receiver on the team. He has become the forgotten man as we move into 2023.

Collins didn’t have a bad season, but he didn’t take the next step the way everyone had hoped he would. Injuries impacted him, but even at the midway point, Collins was only on pace to be third on the team in receptions behind Williams and Ngata.

Clemson needs Williams to take the next step and Collins to re-emerge as a threat. They also need a third option to present itself. The optimal outcome for the Tigers is for that option to be Adam Randall.

Randall looked the part of ‘physical specimen’ out of high school. Coach Swinney and the staff heaped praise on him for his first spring with the team before an ACL injury derailed his first season. Randall returned to play in 2022, but he struggled to make an impact. He finished fifth among the receivers in receptions, but eighth overall, with Will Shipley, Davis Allen, and Jake Briningstool bringing in more passes as well.

Clemson needs Randall to have an injury-free season and fulfill his potential. A starting lineup of Williams, Collins, and Randall could be very effective. Spector is a good fourth option. He has the experience and can play multiple spots.

The wildcard is Cole Turner. He was a redshirt that the team held back and developed until the Miami game. Once he got in, he hauled in eight receptions in three games for 161 yards. That’s 20.1 yards per reception.

To put that in perspective, Randall only had two more receptions across seven total games and only 12.8 yards per catch.

Turner caught lightning in a bottle in the ACC Championship game, so expecting him to create similar production across a full regular season is probably too much, but his potential is promising. He fights for the ball better than any other member of this unit, and that is a characteristic that has been sorely lacking for the receivers in the past two seasons.

After those five players, there are several that need to prove what they can do. Will Taylor is another player, like Collins, that will be a junior in 2023, but it seems like he just got here. His first season at receiver did not yield the results fans had hoped for, but he had never played the position before. I think we got carried away with expectations because of his athleticism. Injuries impacted him as well, which is a recurring theme for this group. At one point I speculated that Taylor might set football aside and focus on baseball, but that hasn’t happened.

If the receivers can stay healthy, they can be impactful for Clemson Football

Troy Stellato was another player who had fans excited when he signed, but injuries have prevented him from ever contributing in any meaningful way.

The balance of the group will be true freshmen. Only time will tell if any of them can contribute in 2023.

The receivers have taken a lot of criticism over the past two years, but one major variable has changed: Klubnik will be the team’s starting quarterback moving forward. While he is far from a finished product, he is a different player from his predecessor, DJ Uiagalelei.

The receivers have perhaps the best team coming back around them that they have had since 2020. 2023 is the year the team needs them to step up.