It’s official: Clemson star QB Cade Klubnik announces return for 2025 season
Cade Klubnik is back.
The Tigers’ star junior quarterback, who had 43 total touchdowns this season and led Clemson to an ACC championship and first-round College Football Playoff appearance, is returning for his senior season.
Klubnik shared the news on his social media accounts Monday night.
“The story isn’t over,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “See y’all in 2025.”
Coach Dabo Swinney volunteered multiple times this season that he expected Klubnik, a former five-star recruit, to return for 2025.
But Klubnik himself declined to comment on his future immediately before and after Clemson’s first-round CFP loss at Texas.
Those no-comments, plus Klubnik’s success this year, drew at least some level of public intrigue about whether or not he might consider entering the 2025 NFL Draft pool as a draft-eligible junior. Underclassmen had to declare those plans by Jan. 15.
As with any top player, there was also transfer portal intrigue and the thought of how much name, image and likeness money Klubnik might command if he chose to enter the transfer portal (though Klubnik never indicated anything but loyalty to Clemson, and the Tigers publicly never seemed worried about happening).
Regardless, Klubnik shut down all of those talks Monday.
Klubnik (6-foot-2, 210 pounds) finished the year completing 63.4% of his passes for 3,639 yards, 36 touchdowns and six interceptions in 14 games. He added a career-high 463 rushing yards and seven touchdowns for 4,102 yards of total offense.
His 36 passing TDs were tied for the second most in a single season in Clemson history, and his 43 total TDs were the sixth most in single-season school history and most since future No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence’s 45 in 2019.
The former No. 1 overall QB recruit in the Class of 2022 out of Austin, Texas, Klubnik will enter his senior season and third year as a starter ranked among the top five in most major Clemson passing categories.
His return positions Clemson as a preseason top 15 team and one of the favorites to win the ACC championship in 2025. Klubnik, 21, should garner some preseason ACC Player of the Year and initial Heisman Trophy buzz, too.
Clemson went 10-4 this year and made its first CFP appearance since 2020, albeit in an expanded field and through an automatic bid as the ACC champion.
NIL payday for Klubnik
Although the NIL collective is yet to formally announce the deal, Klubnik’s return to Clemson indicates he’s signed a new deal with the 110 Society, the NIL arm for the Tigers football program and other teams on campus.
Terms of those deals aren’t announced, but it’s expected to be lucrative.
Clemson, along with other schools, is entering the first year of a revenue-sharing setup brought on by the House vs. NCAA settlement. Under those terms, schools can share up to $20.5 million directly with their athletes starting July 1.
Schools can choose how to split up that money among sports teams, and most are expected to allot roughly 75%, or $15.375 million, to their football teams. Swinney has said publicly that Clemson’s football allotment will be significantly higher.
“At Clemson, we’re gonna be as good as anybody out there,” he said.
Naturally, a two-time ACC championship game MVP at the game’s most important position, such as Klubnik, fits into that equation well, in terms of earnings.
Swinney said football teams’ pots of revenue sharing money would be divided up among all the players on the team, “and that’ll be based on your roster.”
Clemson’s coach has compared it to a version of the NFL salary cap and gave a not-so-subtle example in November of how a football team might distribute its revenue.
“If you’ve got a fourth-year quarterback coming back that’s a three year starter, well, you best believe he’s going to do pretty good, right?” Swinney said with a grin, describing Klubnik’s exact situation for the 2025 season. “It’s just the way it is.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2024 at 6:14 PM.
