Cole Turner makes watch list for 2024 Comeback Player of the Year

Suffering a season-ending injury is one of the hardest things an athlete can go through mentally. It's even worse when they are on the verge of breaking out. That's what happened with Cole Turner. Thankfully, Turner is back on the field, healthy, and ready for a comeback.

The College Sports Communicator, in association with The Associated Press and the Fiesta Bowl Organization, released a watch list for the 2024 Comeback Play of the Year, naming Turner as a candidate. He was the only Tiger to make the list.

In 2022, no one around the Clemson world thought that Turner would play much, if at all, and they certainly wouldn't have thought he would have a 100-plus-yard game, but he did. Coach Dabo Swinney held the former three-star prospect off the field until the final four games of his freshman season to preserve his redshirt status. He recorded his first stats with a nine-yard reception versus Miami on November 19, 2022, but tore North Carolina up with a 101-yard performance.

When he was lost for the season in 2023, Coach Swinney said, "we felt like [Turner] was on his way to a big-time year this year." While last year might have been a loss, he has nowhere else to go but up. And like Swinney said, "The good news for him, again, he's got his whole career in front of him."