It would seem that leading a team to a 12-2 season that included an ACC Championship and a College Football Playoff appearance is no longer enough to warrant you the starting quarterback position at Clemson.
The new standards only require extreme potential and long luscious locks of free flowing golden hair with no college experience outside of an overblown spring game back in April.
Of course I say that condescendingly. We all know that’s not really the case. But a good portion of the Tiger fan base would have you thinking otherwise.
For all the success that Kelly Bryant helped bring to Clemson in 2017, he seems to be receiving a lot more negative flack than praise and I can't understand why.
I've seen and heard a lot of things from Clemson fans that would have you thinking Bryant led the Tigers to a losing season last year. I just assumed that the people saying these things were just ignorant fans who didn't watch a snap of football all year and only remember the last thing they saw, which was Alabama rolling the Tigers in the Sugar Bowl.
I decided to ask a couple Clemson themed Facebook groups a question that I knew would get some interesting responses. I wanted to get a gauge for how the fan base felt about their current quarterback versus the incoming phenom based on some of the rhetoric that was being tossed around for weeks after the Spring Game.
Below is the question I offered them:
The responses came flooding in and it was quite the mixed bag of points of view about the situation. Some felt Kelly Bryant deserved to start, some felt he probably would start but that Trevor Lawrence would eventually take over early in the season, and some even said they think Lawrence will earn the starting role in fall camp.
Most responses were made in a calm and subjective way. But there were a few people who responded with complete nonsensical remarks about certain aspects of Kelly's game -- I couldn't let those go without shedding some light on facts for them.
FYI -- I did have to block one person and I believe a couple have blocked me after a couple of heated debates but it's ok, they got the point
I want to address some of the myths and misconceptions about Kelly Bryant's skills, abilities and competence as the starting quarterback at Clemson University.
[click each picture to view a comment and my reaction to them]
Kelly Bryant is in one of the most challenging situations for a quarterback. He is the successor to the best quarterback in Clemson history [Deshaun Watson] and is the predecessor to what most people believe will be the next great for the Tigers in Trevor Lawrence.
In Bryant's first year as the starter at Clemson, he led the Tigers to a 12-2 record. Their only regular season loss was on the road at Syracuse on Friday, October 13th, 27-24. Kelly left the game with a minute to go in the first half due to a concussion and would not return. His final stats for that game were 12/17 for 116 yards.
The only other loss was in the infamous Sugar Bowl against Alabama -- a game in which the Tide were well rested and well prepared. The Tigers were never able to get into the endzone and ended up losing the game, 24-6. Bryant finished the game 18/36 (50%), 124 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions.
Don't let those stats fool you into thinking that the loss was all on a bad performance by KB though. He has to take some of the blame but he is far from the being the only problem the Tigers had that night. As a team, they averaged only 1.9 yards per carry on 33 attempts for a total of 64 yards.
The receivers could not create separation all night, giving Bryant no easy targets in the passing game. Not to mention the constant pressure he was under from the lack of blocking he got up front from his offensive line. Bryant was sacked FIVE times and hit over 11 times behind the line of scrimmage.
All that aside, let's get into what Kelly Bryant did well this past season to help eliminate some of the false narratives that are floating around the Clemson fan base.
**End gets cut off because during the recording of this, a storm came through and cut the power**
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