Hunter Johnson is back. The makeup of Clemson’s QB room has changed quite a bit
Clemson’s quarterback room was plentiful in 2017.
Following a national championship season, the Tigers lost starting quarterback Deshaun Watson to the pros but returned three — Kelly Bryant (the new starter), Zerrick Cooper and Tucker Israel — and brought in two more — Hunter Johnson, a five-star recruit and Chase Brice, a three-star recruit. That year, the team won a third straight ACC championship and made the College Football Playoff a third consecutive time, but fell short in the semifinals.
Two years later, all five quarterbacks were gone.
Now, after spending four seasons with Northwestern, Johnson is back at Clemson as a graduate transfer, taking advantage of an extra season the NCAA granted student-athletes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He’s a boomerang portal guy,” Tigers coach Dabo Swinney said Tuesday during an appearance on ACC Network’s Packer and Durham. “He’s coming back where he started, coming right back.”
The dynamic of the Tigers’ quarterback room this time around is much different than when Johnson left.
For starters, the Tigers have two quarterbacks who were five-star recruits in rising junior DJ Uiagalelei and incoming freshman Cade Klubnik. There’s also redshirt freshman Hunter Helms and true freshman Billy Wiles, both of whom were put on scholarship this semester; preferred walk-ons Caleb Nix, the brother of Oregon quarterback Bo Nix; and Trent Pearman, the son of Tigers director of football recruiting Danny Pearman.
The quarterback exodus
In January 2018, Trevor Lawrence arrived on campus as a highly-touted, five-star recruit and four-year varsity starter at Cartersville (Georgia) High School. Less than a month after Lawrence’s arrival, Cooper opted to transfer to Jacksonville State.
Johnson was the next to leave Clemson. He decided to transfer in June 2018 and landed with Northwestern.
Bryant was the last of the higher-profiled Tigers quarterbacks to leave in 2018, doing so after getting benched for Lawrence four games into the season. The Calhoun Falls native went to the Missouri Tigers as a graduate transfer and was the immediate starting quarterback there in 2019.
Once Clemson lost the bulk of its quarterback depth in 2018, the Tigers used wide receiver Hunter Renfrow, now with the Las Vegas Raiders, as an emergency quarterback. They came out fine, though, winning another national title with a perfect 15-0 record.
Four-star quarterback Taisun Phommachanh arrived but redshirted in 2019. Brice transferred to Duke the next spring, months after five-star quarterback DJ Uiagalelei arrived on campus.
Of the four quarterbacks who left Clemson over the two-year span, three still had college eligibility this past season.
What came after Clemson
While not always the case when transferring, Cooper’s decision worked out as he became the Gamecocks’ starter right away. He was QB1 for all 13 of Jacksonville State’s games in 2018 as the team finished 9-4. That season, he threw for 3,416 yards and 32 touchdowns.
By the time Cooper’s collegiate career ended this past season, he set Jacksonville State’s single-season record for most passes completed (40 in 2019) and had the second-most passes completed (32). He’s also tied for all-time passing touchdowns with 61 while holding the record for career passing yards per game (a minimum of five games played) with 258.3 yards per outing over 29 games played.
Cooper is one of six Gamecocks to reach 5,000 career passing yards. Of the six, he accomplished the feat with the second-fewest pass attempts. He also played for the American Team in the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl on Jan. 29 and had a 30-yard pass.
Bryant only had one year of eligibility left and had a decent year with the Missouri-based Tigers. He only missed two games due to a lingering knee injury but closed out his final season of college football with 2,215 passing yards and 15 touchdowns with six interceptions.
Brice started 11 games for the Blue Devils and totaled 2,170 passing yards and 10 TDs in 2020, then transferred again. This time, he went to Appalachian State and became the starter there. The former Tiger was named the 2021 Sun Belt Conference Newcomer of the Year after setting App State’s new single-season passing record with 3,337 yards, averaging 238.4 per outing with a total of 27 scores through the air.
When Johnson left Clemson, he had to sit out a year due to the NCAA transfer rules of that time with Northwestern being another FBS school.
Once eligible in 2019, he played in half of the Wildcats’ games with five starts as the team went 3-9. He went 6 for 17 for 55 yards in his debut against Stanford on Aug. 31, 2019 before finishing the year with 432 yards and a score.
Johnson struggled with injuries and only appeared in two games in 2020, then was named the season-opening starter in 2021. It lasted two games before he was benched for former South Carolina quarterback Ryan Hilinski, who traded quarterbacking duties with fellow senior Andrew Marty.
What Johnson can offer Clemson this time
How much playing time Johnson will actually get in 2022 has yet to be determined. Reports from 247Sports indicated his initial interest was to come back to Clemson as a graduate assistant coach, so perhaps he won’t be bothered if he doesn’t see the field much.
Though Johnson’s time at Northwestern wasn’t perfect — the Wildcats only had one winning season in Johnson’s three years there — he gained experience whether as a starter or while dealing with injuries. It’s his biggest asset in a Tigers quarterback room whose most experienced player of the four scholarship guys is Uiagalelei. The sophomore only had two starts with limited playing time prior to the 2021 season.
Klubnik, a five-star recruit and the top-ranked quarterback in the Class of 2022, had a record-setting high school career that included three straight state titles, but he’ll need time to adjust to the college level. Being a mid-year enrollee certainly helps in that process as does having older guys like Uiagalelei and Johnson from which to learn.
This story was originally published February 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
