On a place that is supposed to be UNC focused, it’s impossible to ignore the elephant—or in the case the tiger—in the room. That tiger will clearly be the biggest x-factor in the Death Valley matchup this weekend. After struggling the first couple of weeks on offense, Clemson has decided to move on to a first-year quarterback to helm the team. His performance—and how UNC handles him—will be what determines the success of the game this weekend.
Many Carolina fans were understandably shaken when Clemson’s
coach Dabo Swinney named Reynolds the starter this weekend. The last time Carolina faced a quarterback that wasn’t the starter was the 2022 ACC Championship game, and it turned into an absolute demolition. The move sounds heavily like one of Swinney trying anything to get the attention of his team, and in front of a home crowd that is looking for anything worth cheering for, it could work.
Reynolds isn’t a complete stranger to action this season as he’s played in both games so far, albeit under much less stress. He completed mop-up duty against LSU and there really wasn’t much game pressure on him against Georgia Southern. Now he has a full week of game action to assimilate, he really hasn’t put much on tape for the UNC coaches to study, and because of the level of opponents Carolina has faced and their reliance on the starters, there’s a lot out there for him to look at and game plan for.
Still, this works both ways. Reynolds is a true first-year player, and depending on the service you review he was either a three-star or four-star recruit. It’s fair to say he’s not exactly the level of quarterback that Clemson has snagged the last couple of seasons, and if the Bill Belichick defense is able to make his life tough in front of the 80,000 fans, it’s possible things will roll downhill quickly for him.
This is a better defense, by any metric, than Clemson faced last year. They have seven sacks on the season, have only given up a total of thirteen points, and limited a TCU offense that hung 63 against Grambling this last weekend to just ten points. They made their heralded transfer portal acquisition Jaden Craig struggle mightily, and the pressure that the UNC defensive front has been able to produce has been impressive.
So if you want to look at this from the UNC perspective, it’s the performance of their defensive front against the first year player getting his first ever start at high noon in front of the home fans who already haven’t had an issue vocalizing their displeasure with the way the rest of college football seems to be passing them by. Really, though, all of that feels secondary to the actual performance of Reynolds himself. As an unknown quantity with little tape, the Tigers can potentially game plan their way through, it’s just a question of whether or not he is up to the task provided.
We’ll probably know quickly what sort of day he’s going to have. Clemson getting off to a quick start like last season will settled him in and start the process of a repeat final score. The Tar Heels stopping him, perhaps even turning him over or getting to him with pressure, might be enough to turn the tide and settled the team that has a more experienced player under center. So with that, keep an eye on Reynolds for how the rest of the game will go.
