Clemson Football: Thankful to have been wrong about Jake Briningstool

Clemson Football is now on a three-game winning streak as we approach the season finale against the South Carolina Gamecocks.

As we begin this Thanksgiving week, it is natural to think about the things that we are thankful for, and I am no different. I do, however, also tend to think about the things that I have learned. Often these are things that I misunderstood or was mistaken about.

Over Clemson’s bye week in mid-October, I privately told some friends that I didn’t think Jake Briningstool was going to be on this team in 2024, and it wasn’t because I thought he would go pro. I felt he was a strong candidate to transfer.

To that point, he hadn’t played nearly as well as most people thought and hoped he would. My opinion is that most observers saw Briningstool as the second-best pass catcher on this team behind Antonio Williams this past offseason. My expectation was that he would be a key part of this offense from the beginning because Garrett Riley had always found a way to use productive tight ends at his previous stops at SMU and TCU.

Through six games, Briningstool just looked like he didn’t fit in with Riley’s offense. He wasn’t getting many targets, and when he did he wasn’t making the plays. A few times balls hit him right in the hands and he couldn’t bring them in.

Something was off, and my feeling was that maybe he just wasn’t the right tight end for this scheme. At the time, I told my friends that I felt this offense was begging for someone like Josh Sapp.

Jake Briningstool has been a different player in the second half of the Clemson Football season

Briningstool must have read my mail, because things have been very different since the Tigers began the back half of their schedule. He started it with a career day against Miami in a losing effort. He had two touchdowns and 126 yards receiving on 5 catches. Several things went wrong for the Tigers that night, but Jake was a star. He was named the Mackey Tight End of the Week.

Since then he has continued to be a primary contributor to this offense. The interesting thing is that the other tight ends, Sage Ennis and Sapp, have been bigger contributors in the second half of this season too.

Maybe it was Riley who hadn’t figured out how the make the tight end work with this personnel grouping. Maybe it was Cade Klubnik, who has had quite a bit to figure out this season himself.

Either way, it appears I misread the situation. Sometimes it’s a joy to be wrong, and I am thankful I was wrong about Jake Briningstool.

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