4-Star EDGE AJ Hoffler: "Nothing is better than Clemson"

Clemson now has 13 commitments in the 2023 class, and 10 have come in the month of June. The latest to put his name on the list is AJ Hoffler.

Dabo Swinney and the Tigers beat out the likes of Ohio State and South Carolina for the No. 273 prospect in the On3 Consensus.

The ACC program didn’t offer as early as the Buckeyes or the Gamecocks, but once they offered, they got the four-star on campus, and things started to shift their direction.

“My first visit to Clemson was in March and I didn’t really know what to expect,” Hoffler said. “That first visit changed things though. I learned a lot about Coach Swinney, how he cares about his players, what the coaching staff is about, and that is when Clemson really got my attention.”

Ohio State was the frontrunner for the star out of Atlanta Woodward Academy early in the spring. That was his dream school. Hoffler visited Ohio State five times throughout the process, but the more he went to Clemson, the more his feelings changed.

“It is a different vibe at Clemson. It is one big family there. Everyone gets along and everyone supports each other,” he said. … “It is just not about football at Clemson. From the head of the school to the football team, it is a family. It is about everyone wanting the best for each other. That really made a big impression on me. I visited Clemson four times and I loved it more each time.”

Official visit sealed the deal for AJ Hoffler

On the official visit, on the weekend of June 3, that is when Hoffler gave Swinney the news. He actually told Lemanski Hall the day before the visit started. Hoffler even knew well before then that Clemson was his school.

“I loved it, my family loved it, my grandparents loved it – I knew it was Clemson,” he said. “They did a great job recruiting me and getting to know me and my family. No other school recruited me the way Clemson did. They made me feel so wanted. … After telling coach Hall about my decision first, I met with Coach Swinney during the official visit to tell him about my commitment. I told him that I was ready to commit and shut my recruitment down.

“… He was excited, Coach Hall was excited, and me and my family were excited too. We are knew Clemson was where I needed to be.”

Hoffler has let the news out on June 21 to honor his mother on her birthday. She and the family are excited about the future of the new Clemson commit.

They took recruiting trips, they built relationships, they had many talks, and they found the right school.

“Clemson has everything I wanted,” Hoffler said. “From the academics to the culture, to the coaching staff, to the people – I found it all at Clemson.

“After that first visit in March, things changed for me. Clemson is about family and I am excited to be a part of it.”