It may be too little, too late to save Clemson's "massively disappointing" season, but Cade Klubnik has finally arrived.
After a disastrous start that saw the Tigers' national title hopes evaporate before Halloween, the senior quarterback has engineered one of the most dramatic mid-season turnarounds in college football. His surge has been so significant that it's forcing national analysts to take notice, with ESPN pushing him up a staggering 26 spots to No. 28 in their new quarterback power rankings.
A Tale of Two Seasons
ESPN's Bill Connelly, who has been tracking the shift, summed it up perfectly: “in October, Cade Klubnik officially became Cade Klubnik again.”
The numbers don't just back it up; they're a complete indictment of the season's poor start. Connelly laid out the night-and-day difference in Klubnik's performance:
That's a jump from a below-average game manager to one of the most efficient and explosive quarterbacks in the country. The confidence and timing that had him projected as a first-round pick back in August are finally showing up consistently.
Klubnik joined Pitt's Mason Heintschel and Georgia Tech's Haynes King as one of the week's biggest movers in the rankings.
While this late-season surge won't erase the frustrations of a 4-5 record or the string of humiliating home losses, it answers one crucial question for the program. As Connelly put it, "This will always go down as a massively disappointing season, but Klubnik did show up, at least.”
For a team desperate for a bright spot, the "official" arrival of their star quarterback is a legitimate building block for whatever comes next.