Clemson players and commits react to news of Brent Venables leaving
On Sunday night, it was officially announced that longtime Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables will be the next head coach at Oklahoma.
Venables returns to a program that he had coached at for 13 seasons before arriving at Clemson in 2012. With Venables as their DC, the Tigers won two national championships, both of them against the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Since Venables is one of, if not the best, in the business, his departure was met with plenty of reactions on social media.
Here are some of the tweets from current and future Tigers about Venables’ departure.
Players react to Venables news
Tyler Venables, Venables’ son, also shared a message on Instagram. He posted a photo of him and his father, with the caption, “Nobody more deserving.”
We will also point out that linebacker Trenton Simpson’s profile picture on Twitter has been changed. It was previously a picture of him in a Clemson uniform; now, it is an all-black picture.
This could absolutely be nothing and us reading too much into the situation, but it is worth mentioning.
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All in all, the tweets above illustrate the type of impact Venables has had on these young men. Countless players wanted him to stay for a reason; he’s as committed as they come and is as knowledgeable about coaching defenses as anyone in college football.
He also played a huge role in each of their recruitments, so these relationships goes back well before they arrived on Clemson’s campus.
Speculation about who will be the next defensive coordinator is going to start, but it’ll be interesting to see if the Tigers go with an in-house hire to keep some familiarity with the players.
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We will also be keeping an eye on the transfer portal. That is not to say that anyone is definitively leaving, but a player or two leaving as a result of Venables heading elsewhere is a possibility.
Andrew Mukuba did tweet at an Oklahoma player shortly after the news broke.
Commits send out tweets regarding Venables’ departure
On Instagram, four-star linebacker pledge Jaren Kanak also reacted to the news using an emoji. When posting over a video of Venables putting on an Oklahoma hat in a plane, Kanak put the tear emoji.
Jihaad Campbell shared his reaction to that video as well. The top-30 overall senior in the country simply put, “Damn” in response to that video.
As we said about the transfer portal, we’re not going to throw out names of any commits who could end up leaving the 2022 class. It’s too early for that and would be unfair to each of these commits, who were hit with some big news 10 days from Early Signing Period.
The only thing we’ll say is that Keon Sabb went on Instagram Live on Sunday morning and reaffirmed his commitment. HERE is what he had to say when talking about Venables and where things stand with the Tigers.
We’ll also mention that Kanak’s head coach, Tony Crough, talked with us about what a Venables’ departure could mean. He said Kanak will “reevaluate it” if Venables goes to Oklahoma, so that is something we’ll keep an eye on.