Cade Klubnik identifies the key difference in college, where he's made the biggest strides

Clemson‘s five-star true freshman quarterback Cade Klubnik dominated at the high school level, and shined in his limited opportunity in his collegiate debut in the waning moments of last Saturday’s 41-10 victory over Georgia Tech.

While he looked cool and collected in the pocket, Klubnik admitted that there’s been a learning curve since arriving on Clemson’s campus as an early enrollee back in January.

“I would say the trenches,” Klubnik said about the biggest difference between high school and college. “And just how fast the d-line is. I am going against the best defensive line in the country, so that’s maybe a little bit of a factor into that but, you got Myles Murphy at 6-foot-5, 295 [pounds] coming at you, running a 4.4 [40-yard dash]. So you’re pulling some of those zone reads and he catches you that doesn’t happen very often in high school where I used to be able to get away with that. So I would say that’s probably the biggest difference so far.”

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Klubnik was the No. 1 quarterback prospect in the nation in the 2022 signing class. He was a five-star and the No. 18 recruit in the country, according to the On3 Consensus, and after his performance on Saturday, many are calling for him to start heading into Clemson’s Week 2 matchup against Furman.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney even told reporters after Week 1 that he plans to play Klubnik as much as possible after scoring his first career touchdown last weekend. Still, Klubnik says he still has a lot to learn moving forward.

“I think the biggest way I really strengthened was just the playbook and protections. I’m like so happy I came in January,” Klubnik said. “Cause I can’t imagine learning this all in fall camp. Although it can be done and Antonio [Williams] is killing it right now while doing it. But you know, at the quarterback position there’s a lot you need to do and it’s been super helpful that I got to do that. 

“But during fall camp I would just say, just finalizing learning the offense has been really really good. And I feel very solid in that now. Going forward, I think just continuing to focus at one week at a time. I think my biggest part that I’m excited to kinda learn and get better at is just game prepping and kinda picking away defenses and seeing new strategies, seeing what new coaches are seeing, learning how to prepare for a game each week.”