It will either be a tremendous success or a huge embarrassing failure. Either way, Dabo Swinney once again decided against adding a quarterback in the transfer portal this past offseason. He has been so painfully slow to embrace the newish phenomenon that is defining this new era of college football. With Cade Klubnik having turned pro, Swinney must hand the keys to the offense to one of two guys.
Heading into the final weeks of fall camp, the new Clemson starting quarterback will either be redshirt junior Christopher Vizzina or the promising true freshman Tait Reynolds. Vizzina has been with the Clemson program for a while, looking promising during his lone start last year vs. SMU. Reynolds has surpassed Chris Denson, Trent Pearman, and Brock Bradley on Clemson's quarterback depth chart.
While logic should prevail in the end with the seasoned Vizzina getting the starting job over the true freshman Reynolds, we have seen crazier things happen in college football before. Keep in mind that Swinney has a reputation for playing promising freshmen early. He made it a point to get the likes of Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence into games early in their first seasons with the Tigers program.
No matter what happens, Swinney is playing with fire during his most critical year at Clemson to date.
Dabo Swinney has given us a blueprint on how to navigate a QB situation
This is not that hard to figure out. Fortunately for us, we have seen Swinney have to traverse these tricky quarterback situation waters before. There have been other quarterbacks before, namely Cole Stoudt and Kelly Bryant, who bided their time before starting games. Stoudt looked so overwhelmed from the jump, while Bryant had his moments during his lone season as the starter with the program.
Frankly, we could be seeing something similar this season with Vizzina having waited his turn, but Reynolds quickly moving up the ranks. Clemson needs to find the right combination of steadiness and dynamism to cut through a competitive top-half of the ACC. The idea suggests that Vizzina is the steadier quarterback of the two, mostly because he has been here a minute. What about dynamism?
The other big thing to consider is that Chad Morris is back with the program as offensive coordinator. Let's also not overlook that one of Swinney's most beloved quarterbacks from yesteryear, Tajh Boyd, is now the team's quarterbacks coach. Both Morris and Boyd will play a role in whoever wins the starting job, as well as who could keep it. Again, do not be surprised if both Vizzina and Reynolds play.
Ultimately, Clemson will probably be a better team than most pundits will ever give them credit for. This should be a top-25 team to start the season. However, because there is still so much unknown at quarterback, it is hard to peg Clemson as anything other than a potentially good, but not necessarily a great, team yet. How either Vizzina or Reynolds play could determine this Clemson team's ceiling.
In a best-case scenario, Clemson can make the playoffs as either an ACC champ or an at-large team.
Add us as a preferred source on Google