Dabo Swinney raves about DJ Uiagalelei after Thursday scrimmage

Clemson quarterback DJ Uiagalelei is a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate for this year’s college football season. A player doesn’t end up on that list without being incredibly talented.

Much of the college football world knows Uiagalelei is talented. He was a former five-star prospect who was one of the highest rated players in the country at his position coming out of high school.

But he’s still only seen 235 snaps of big-time college football. That all changes this season, now that Trevor Lawrence has moved onto the Jacksonville Jaguars.

This will still be his first year as a full-time starter in big-time college football. The sophomore quarterback is still growing and improving every day in practice for the Tigers.

His head coach, Dabo Swinney, was raving about his performance in practice on Thursday, when he spoke with the media. He told reporters that Thursday was clearly the best day he’s had yet.

“Well, he hasn’t really had a bad day,” Swinney said. “I just thought this was his best day as far as just putting it all together. Now, some of that was because of other people. Little cleaner up front. But just command of everything that he’s doing. Fundamentally, I thought he was his best today. Made the right decisions, made some critical plays at critical times. [He] should have had a couple more that we dropped [that he] put right on the money. But just very clean. Clean with his exchanges. Clean with his footwork. Made all the calls right and made good decisions.”

Dabo also made sure to mention that his uber-talented signal-caller made the practice reps and simulated them as if they were game reps.

“I just thought he had a game-like mentality today. I could really see him pushing himself to make every rep a game rep.”

DJ Uiagalelei on Georgia

The first official game of the Uiagalelei era at Clemson will be against the Georgia Bulldogs.

With a win, the quarterback can set a tone that even though Trevor Lawrence is gone, the Tigers are still an elite team with him at the helm.

Still, Clemson’s starting quarterback isn’t taking the Bulldogs’ defense lightly in his preparation.

“I’ve looked at Georgia. They have a great defense, a lot of people coming back, they are great up front,” Uiagalelei said. “They have a great secondary, a lot of transfers coming in. It’s going to be a great game.

“I think for the most part, we are all just excited to play the first game. Knowing we have a quality opponent in Georgia and a high-caliber team, I think it just makes it that more fun going through camp.”

Uiagalelei’s poise, leadership ability and skill set has been on display all summer. In the next few weeks, the nation will get to see what Swinney is raving about.

Clemson kicks off their season in a much anticipated contest against Georgia on Sept. 4. The game will be televised on ABC at 7:30 p.m. EST.

On3’s Sean Labar and Stephen Samra also contributed to this article.