How QB development helped Cade Klubnik, Clemson do more than reach the CFP

THE LOW POINT for Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik came after a Week 9 loss to NC State last year.

The Tigers were 4-4, assured of ending a streak of 12 straight seasons with 10 or more wins, and Klubnik was on the hook for the dynasty's demise.

At least, that's how it felt at the time.

Klubnik had been a prized recruit, but his ascendance at Clemson had come in fits and starts -- a dizzying debut in mop-up duty, a long-delayed takeover of the offense in a rollicking ACC championship game win, a bowl loss, and now this.

In another era, the roller-coaster ride would've been part of the deal. Quarterbacks rarely develop into superstars overnight. It requires, as Clemson coach Dabo Swinney likes to call it, time "in the crock-pot."

In this era, however, coaches and QBs rarely tolerate the slow simmer, and so the familiar narrative began for Klubnik, too.

"It was tough," Klubnik told ESPN. "I had a lot of people in my ear after last season asking if I wanted to leave."

That's the preferred path these days. Look no further than the 2022 class, for which Klubnik was the crown jewel.

This year's College Football Playoff will feature four starting QBs from the 2022 class: Klubnik, Penn State's Drew Allar, SMU's Kevin Jennings and Boise State's Maddux Madsen. Georgia's Gunner Stockton could add his name, depending on the health of starter Carson Beck. But they are the exceptions.

Of the top 30 QB recruits in that class, just four ended the regular season as a starter, and more than two-thirds have transferred. Klubnik and Allar are the clear-cut success stories, and even they've been dogged by criticism and setbacks. That they're still here, on the verge of playoff games, is borderline miraculous.

Klubnik turned down all overtures from the outside. It helped that Clemson ended the 2023 season on a five-game winning streak and that Klubnik had seen marked -- if gradual -- growth in each outing. But it was more about his relationship with Swinney, about the time in that crock-pot.

"I never had any doubt with Cade," Swinney said. "If I did, I would've gone and taken a big-time portal guy. But I believe in Cade. He's a worker, he's gifted, he's smart. He deserves all the credit because he's really grown."

This is how the story is supposed to unfold, Swinney said. Quarterbacks are always a work in progress, and Swinney is aware of how rare it is to see someone like Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence sprint up the growth curve.

After last season ended, Swinney pulled Klubnik aside for a meeting. His message was simple: No, 2023 wasn't good enough, but yes, he believed unflinchingly that Klubnik would become something special at Clemson.

"After a season you wouldn't ever dream of having," Klubnik said, "to have somebody like that come and tell you he still believes in you and trusts in you, that means a lot."

So Klubnik stayed, and he improved, and though he still hasn't blossomed into the latest version of Lawrence, he threw 33 touchdowns and has Clemson back in the College Football Playoff for the first time since Lawrence left town.

Klubnik isn't so much a success story. He's a byproduct of staying the course.

THERE WAS A familiar sense of dread as Klubnik fished the cell phone from his locker in the aftermath of Clemson's Week 1 loss to Georgia in September.

A year ago -- heck, even a few months earlier, he said -- this would've been the salt in the wound. He had already deleted all social media apps from his phone, determined to avoid a toxic feedback loop, but the silence was sometimes worse. After a good game, the texts praising his play were ubiquitous -- a week later, after accounting for seven touchdowns in a blowout win over Appalachian State, he'd have upwards of 120 messages waiting -- but after losses, it was crickets.

This time, there were just five texts, all from friends or family who didn't care if he won or lost.

There's a lesson in that, Klubnik said.

"Find your circle," Klubnik said. "You listen to the four or five people. Those are the people that are there for you in the hard times."

That's not always easy.

For star recruits, there's always an endless supply of opinions from people outside the circle. The struggles are the result of a bad fit, bad coaching, bad fans, bad vibes. The money is better elsewhere. There will be less pressure and more praise. The grass is bright green, just on the other side of the transfer portal.

For coaches, it's nearly as bad. The pressure to win -- and win now -- is immense, and living with a QB still paying his dues might mean you're out of a job before seeing the fruits of that labor.

"It's hard to have patience, because you have so much noise," Swinney said. "It's a lot harder than it used to be. Everybody wants to win yesterday, and unfortunately with quarterback play, it's developmental."

Swinney's former defensive coordinator, Brent Venables, lived that paradox at Oklahoma this season. The Sooners went 6-6 in 2024, due in part to myriad injuries at receiver and along the O-line, but the brunt of the criticism fell on the coach and his quarterbacks.

Venables opened the year with sophomore Jackson Arnold (a former five-star recruit) as his starting QB, then switched to freshman Michael Hawkins Jr., then flipped back to Arnold, who ultimately landed in the transfer portal after the regular season. It was hard to find much enthusiasm amid the constant criticism of the QB play, but Venables said he worked tirelessly to recalibrate the message.

"Well before the season started, you were talking about these moments," Venables said of the team's offensive struggles. "We spend a lot of time throughout the year developing toughness and mindset. And every week you have to start completely over with your process. And if you do it the right way, [improvement] is usually more incremental than not."

Incremental improvements can be a tough sell when the expectations of immediate success mix with the temptations of an easier path somewhere else.

Klubnik admits he was unprepared for the wave of criticism he endured, along with the endless pressure to win or move on during that 2023 campaign. It was the first real failure in his career, which included three state championships in high school and an ACC championship game MVP in his first significant action at Clemson. Suddenly the talent and the work weren't enough to guarantee results, and so the little voice in his head that worried he didn't belong was amplified by the countless voices from outside nudging him out the door.

"Just because you're not listening to the criticism doesn't mean you don't hear it," Klubnik said. "Those words can definitely be heavy."

There were times last season, Klubnik said, when he didn't want to go to class or go out to eat. He was the face of Clemson's football program, and in a small college town, there was nowhere to hide.

Looking back though, Klubnik is grateful.

"Pain like that, it does something to people," he said. "But it can make you better. I'm thankful I went through stuff like that because I came out better on the other side."

To fail is to learn.

The problem, of course, is the lessons are only fully realized long after the losses are added to the standings.

NOBODY TOLD ALLAR to stay quiet. In fact, his coaches encouraged him to put his own stamp on Penn State's offense last year, but that wasn't his nature. He had spent his first year on campus learning under incumbent Sean Clifford, a four-year starter. With Clifford, it all looked like a well-oiled machine, so when Allar took over, he figured it was his job to conform to the status quo.

It mostly worked. Penn State went 10-3 in 2023, and Allar threw 25 touchdowns with just two interceptions. But in the big moments against Ohio State and Michigan, when the Nittany Lions needed something extra special from the QB, there was only more of the same.

It was only later, after Penn State brought in new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki to rejuvenate the offense last offseason, did Allar understand that he had gotten the math backwards, that he needed to help tailor the offense, not conform to it.

"It's about experience," Allar said. "You can talk about development all you want, and learning behind somebody, but experience is the biggest thing. You gain more perspective on the things you need to be on top of, on communication with the staff, about being open and honest with them."

He had heard all that before he took his first snaps at QB1, but it took a year of living it to really understand.

And yet learning on the job is a luxury afforded to too few elite QB prospects.

Of 2022's top 30 QBs ranked by 247's recruiting composite -- a consensus of all major recruiting services, including ESPN's -- just seven have at least 10 starts under their belts, three years into their college careers. Of those seven, just two -- Klubnik and Allar -- remain at their original school. Nine have avoided the transfer portal, and of that group, four have either one or zero starts to their name.

Some of those top-30 QBs -- Maalik Murphy, Walker Howard, Nate Johnson -- are in the portal for a second time. Combined, the top 30 have a Total QBR of just 56.0, are completing less than 60% of their throws and average just more than 6 yards per dropback. More than a dozen still haven't started a game.

There is no simple explanation for why the 2022 class is so rife with bad evaluations, but there are ample possibilities. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted critical junior seasons for this class and kept coaches from doing serious in-person recruiting. The extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA because of COVID also resulted in a wealth of veteran QBs in their fifth, sixth or seventh years retaining starting jobs, which relegated younger QBs to the bench.

Name, image and likeness took over the sport after many members of the 2022 class were committed, and the opening of the transfer portal at the same time made it easy for QBs to leave in search of more money, more playing time or more acclaim. The bottom line for the Class of '22 -- and likely, many more recruiting classes to come -- is the odds are slim that more than a handful will find success with the team they sign with out of high school.

"If the kid's not great as a freshman and the head coach is under a lot of pressure to win right now, you move on to the next guy," Swinney said. "So there's been this mass deal of one-year guys. Go get a guy that's got a ton of experience."

It's the catch-22 of modern QB development: Every coach wants someone with experience, but getting experience requires a coach to live with the ups and downs of a young quarterback.

It's perhaps not surprising then that, looking back at the Class of 2022, the biggest stars aside from Klubnik and Allar were largely overlooked on the recruiting trail.

Iowa State's Rocco Becht was ESPN's No. 36 pocket passer. USC's Jayden Maiava was No. 23. TCU's Josh Hoover was No. 24. Fernando Mendoza, a two-year starter at Cal before entering the portal this month, was No. 72.

Then there's Madsen (No. 56) and Jennings (unranked), who'll start playoff games alongside Klubnik and Allar this week, despite being largely passed over as recruits.

Those guys had the luxury of low expectations, which afforded them time to learn their craft without the constant pressure to perform immediately. When mistakes happened, they were expected. When success finally came, it was a surprise. Jennings, who played high school football in Texas at the same time as Klubnik, had a college experience that looks virtually nothing like Clemson's QB endured.

"Patience is not a good word in our world when it comes to coaches, fans, administrations," Swinney said. "Sometimes the answer is right there, you just have to have some patience."

AFTER CLEMSON LOST to South Carolina in the regular-season finale, a game that could have ended the Tigers' playoff hopes, Klubnik slumped into his car and cried.

Losing is never easy, even with two years of starts under his belt.

But then a few hundred miles away, another former blue-chip recruit who had fallen from grace at Ohio State was engineering a miraculous comeback in Syracuse.

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Kyle McCord has seen both sides of the modern QB's story, proof the portal can be a curse or a blessing.

A year ago, he won 11 of 12 games as Ohio State's starter. He posted an 83.8 Total QBR, the second-best mark in the Big Ten, threw 24 touchdown passes to just six interceptions and had more than 3,100 passing yards.

"When you're a young quarterback, you care a lot about what people have to say about your performance, but you play great one week and they love you and you don't the next week and you're terrible," McCord said.

After a loss to Michigan at the end of the 2023 season, most Ohio State fans thought the latter.

So McCord was shown the door. Ohio State opted to replace him with a transfer: Will Howard from Kansas State. (Interesting side note: The Buckeyes chose Howard over junior Devin Brown, ESPN's No. 4 pocket passer in the Class of 2022, who entered the portal this month.)

McCord landed at Syracuse, a school desperately in need of a veteran. In 2024, he threw for more than 4,300 yards with 29 touchdowns, including three in a Week 14 win over Miami that opened the door for Clemson to make one last push for the College Football Playoff and gave Klubnik another chance to live up to all those expectations.

"Failing's not fun, but it teaches you a lot," McCord said. "I've learned the most from my failures. It's easy to be a quarterback when you're winning, and everything's going great, but the moment it hits the fan and things are going south and you have to be the guy that calms the locker room down, that's not easy to do at all."

KLUBNIK EDNURED THE ups and downs of 2023, stumbled in the opener this season, then righted the ship to get Clemson into the College Football Playoff.

Allar stuck it out at Penn State. The Nittany Lions hired the right offensive coordinator. Now, they're in the field, too.

There's probably little use in searching for a blueprint in those journeys beyond a simple understanding that most players get better with age and experience.

"Just going through it, you learn from those mistakes you made," Allar said. "You gain perspective."

Sometimes, the portal is the best path to figuring things out. Sometimes, a coach can't wait for the seeds planted today to blossom when he also faces the threat of being fired. And sometimes, on increasingly rare occasions, there's a player like Klubnik or Allar, who sticks it out just long enough for the pieces to finally click into place at the same school where the journey began.

The point, perhaps, is that the job is hard, and no one has the perfect blueprint. It's just about knowing the right guy when you see him.

"I wasn't where I wanted to be last year," Klubnik said, "and I'm not where I want to be this year. I still see things I want to get better at."