While the Clemson Tigers have bounced back from their season-opening loss to Duke with dominant wins over Charleston Southern and Florida Atlantic, their kicking situation remains a big problem.
Starting kicker Robert Gunn is just 1-4 on field goal attempts this season. Even worse, the one make was a 23-yard chipshot. The misses came from 41, 23, and 31. Gunn also is just 14 for 15 on extra-point attempts.
With a showdown against No. 4 Florida State looming, Dabo Swinney put in a call to former kicker Jonathan Weitz, who agreed to return to the Tigers. He is projected to be the starter going forward.
The interesting part of all of this is Weitz is a Clemson graduate student who was set to start a non-football job in New York in two weeks. He isn’t graduating until December.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney discussed the process of calling Weitz while he was on a South Carolina beach and asking if he would consider coming to kicking for the Tigers again. “We went to the bullpen and called him off the beach. It’s either going to be a great story or it’s going to be terrible. It’s not going to be anything in between.” Swinney said.
When discussing why he called Weitz instead of going with one of the other kickers on the roster, Swinney had some less-than-favorable things to say about them, noting, “We’ve got two other guys on the roster who just haven’t stepped up, they’ve had an opportunity the past two weeks and they ain’t got it done. They’ve not taken advantage of their opportunities.”
In his career with Clemson, Weitz really didn’t see much action. He went 3/3 on extra points and didn’t attempt a field goal in his four years with the Tigers.
Swinney certainly has a point in saying it will either be great or terrible. There really won’t be a middle ground.
[On3]
