What Clemson football’s Dabo Swinney wants Cade Klubnik to ‘master’ in final season

CLEMSON — Quarterback Cade Klubnik and his play was a burning topic for Clemson football at last spring. It isn’t so much in 2025.

Klubnik blossomed in his second full season as a starter in 2024 after a shaky run in 2023. He set career highs in passing yards (3,639), completions (308) and total touchdowns (43) to lead Clemson to its first ACC championship title since 2022 and its first College Football Playoff appearance since 2020. Despite drawing buzz for the 2025 NFL Draft, he elected to use his final year of eligibility.

Clemson has greater expectations to make a sustained run in the 2025 CFP, and coach Dabo Swinney pointed out one thing where he would like to see his quarterback improve.

“Another area that he can really master even more is just his situational awareness,” Swinney said Friday. “There’s some things there I think he can improve on. He’s a kid that wants to complete every pass.”

Klubnik excelled in this area last fall, including his 50-yard touchdown run against Pitt, and executing a game-winning drive against SMU to win the ACC championship. Still, there were a few hiccups.

One came against Texas in the CFP game. On third-and-goal on the 1-yard line, with a little more than eight minutes left in the game and down 14 points, Clemson ran a designed quarterback run, but Klubnik didn’t follow his block to the outside and went toward the line of scrimmage instead. He was stuffed by the Longhorns’ defense. Clemson went for it on fourth down and was denied again, which ended the game 38-24.

Klubnik improving in these critical moments while maintaining his high-level play can propel Clemson in 2025.

“Last year, we needed to see a lot of improvement on his negative plays, less turnovers, more physical development, more maturity (and) more leadership,” Swinney said. “Need more of the same (in 2025).”

MORE: Clemson will make 60 times more from ACC settlement than it spent on lawsuit, AD projects

Dabo Swinney is happy Clemson and ACC’s legal battle is over

Clemson’s board of trustees voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the settlement of the school’s lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference. Clemson and Florida State sued the ACC over their grant-of-rights agreements, which was seen as the first legal step to departing the conference.

All agreed to a settlement that will provide an enhanced revenue distribution model that rewards performance and media value by viewership and a new exit fee schedule for ACC teams that provides clarity about withdrawing members retaining their future media rights.

For Swinney, he is excited everything is resolved.

“They did a great job. (Athletic director Graham Neff and president Jim Clements) kept me in the loop on what I need to know or whenever I need to know it. Thankful for all the lawyers and people involved,” Swinney said. ” . . . My job is to see if we can win.”

Derrian Carter covers Clemson athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at dcarter@gannett.com and follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DerrianCarter00

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Clemson football: Where Dabo Swinney wants Cade Klubnik to be better