Dabo Swinney and the Clemson Tigers were unable to start off their 2025 season with a win. Instead, they saw the LSU Tigers come in to “Death Valley” and hand them a loss by a final score of 17-10.
Ahead of the 2025 season, many have viewed Clemson as a top-tier national championship contender. A good portion of that hype has come due to the presence of quarterback Cade Klubnik.
Last season, Klubnik had a breakout season for the Tigers. He completed 63.4 percent of his pass attempts for 3,639 yards, 36 touchdowns, and just six interceptions. Klubnik also ran for 463 yards and seven more touchdowns.
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Against LSU, the young signal caller had a rough performance. He threw for 230 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception, while only completing 50 percent of his passes.
Following the disappointing loss for Clemson and the underwhelming performance from Klubnik, Swinney spoke out with brutal honesty about his star quarterback.
As shared by Jon Blau of The Post and Courier, Swinney was not happy with Klubnik’s play.
“We had some critical drops on some contested plays we need to make,” Swinney said. “Not good on third down. Had a couple of penalties. And Cade did not play well.”
Swinney did make it clear that he’s expecting Klubnik to get better. He is very optimistic about the quarterback’s ability to bounce back strong next week.
While the game was concerning, Klubnik is still one of the most talented quarterbacks in the nation. There should be no panic after losing to a team that came into the opening week of the season ranked No. 9. Also, the Tigers are not going to take a huge step back from the loss either.
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Klubnik also spoke out following the loss. He thought back to last season when Clemson also had a season-opening loss to the Georgia Bulldogs and sent out a short and sweet message.
“Let’s bounce back and get back to the playoffs,” Klubnik said.
Next week, the Tigers will face off against Troy at home once again. Clemson will need to come through with a dominant performance, which should not be a problem. That game is scheduled to kick off at 3:30 p.m. ET on September 6.
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