It’s time for this week’s edition of The Insider Report. We hope everyone had a great weekend.

The next great Tiger running back?

Will Shipley. Travis Etienne. CJ Spiller. The lineage of game-changing running backs at Clemson is one that dates back a long time and has continued in recent years.

2025 four-star Liberty Christian Academy (Lynchburg, Va.) running back Gideon Davidson might just be the next great back for the Tigers. With a commitment date set for Wednesday, the rising junior has shut down his recruitment and is ready to announce his decision.

Despite not extending an offer to Davidson until May 31, the Tigers have been in a good position for a long time. The 6-foot, 193-pound back has made numerous visits and was in town as recently as the weekend for Dabo Swinney’s Football Camp. The forecast on Wednesday is very, very sunny in Lynchburg.

An insight on Dabo’s magic

Clemson’s big official visit weekend went swimmingly, as evidenced by the Tigers landing a trio of big-time commitments following the weekend. Five-star linebacker Sammy Brown, four-star wide receiver T.J. Moore and five-star wide receiver Bryant Wesco pledged their verbal commitment to Clemson. Now, The Clemson Insider has received some intel on some things that may have helped reel in some big-time players.

First, former Clemson star quarterback Deshaun Watson was in town. While it is unclear how much of his presence was utilized in regards to recruits, we do know that he at least popped in and chopped it up with some of the guys in town. Another visitor, current university president Jim Clements, played an instrumental role in the weekend. Numerous players held conversations with him throughout the visit and were impressed with his messaging.

“We started it off with a cookout on the lake Friday,” said four-star offensive tackle Fletcher Westphal, one of the official visitors. “Saturday morning, we had breakfast and then the president of the university talked to us. I had actually talked to him one-on-one before that.”

A scavenger hunt, visit to Dabo’s house, water balloon fight, back porch cookouts and photoshoots highlighted the rest of an action-packed weekend.

Is another five-star commit on the way?

Last week, Clemson landed commitments from two five-stars for the 2024 class, Sammy Brown and Bryant Wesco. Five-star Mike Matthews from Lilburn, Ga. could be the next.

We can tell you that after his official visit, Clemson felt great about landing the top-10 national recruit. We can go as far as to say that if signing day was last week, Matthews would have been a Tiger.

Matthews took an official visit to Georgia over the weekend. While on his visit, he tweeted out a video from his official visit to Clemson.

The Clemson staff is putting on a full court press on this one. Tyler Grisham has done a great job positioning the Tigers to land their best class of receivers in years. Dabo Swinney is playing a major role with Matthews.

We will have to see if Georgia was able to change things on his official visit this past weekend, but don’t be surprised if Clemson gets more great news from this five-star over the summer.

Clemson commit excited about new additions to ’24 class

One of Clemson’s two talented linebacker commitments in the 2024 class is Drew Woodaz of Jesuit High School (Tampa, Fla.).

Woodaz, who is of course the younger brother of Clemson rising sophomore linebacker Wade Woodaz, committed to the Tigers in April. And Drew was certainly excited to see Jefferson (Ga.) High School five-star linebacker Sammy Brown join him in Clemson’s 2024 class.

With Brown now on board after announcing his pledge to the Tigers last week, Drew is excited about the tandem they can form in Clemson’s linebacker corps in the future. While each has a different type of skill set, Drew thinks he and Brown will complement each other well and be a strong linebacker duo for the Tigers down the road.

“I think it’s great,” Drew said of Brown’s commitment. “Me and Sammy are pretty different players, and I think we’ll be very compatible together, do a lot of different things well. So, it’ll be like everything on the field will be covered because we’re both so good at different things.”

Along with Brown, Clemson landed commitments from a pair of top receiver prospects last week in Midlothian (Texas) High School five-star Bryant Wesco and Tampa (Fla.) Catholic four-star TJ Moore.

Drew is very familiar with Moore as their two Tampa-based schools have competed a lot, and Drew was really happy to see Moore jump on board with the Tigers as well.

“TJ’s a remarkable athlete,” Drew said. “I had to play against him every year.”

Added Drew of the new additions to Clemson’s 2024 class: “I think they’re huge, and we’re not done yet.”

Clemson’s 2024 class, currently comprised of 11 public commitments, is ranked as the No. 8 class in the country right now according to 247Sports and the 247Sports Composite.

Fast-rising QB loves Clemson, plans to return this fall

A bunch of top quarterback prospects made their way to Clemson for this year’s Dabo Swinney Camps. One of those who traveled to Tiger Town to showcase his talent was fast-rising East Forsyth (Kernersville, N.C.) four-star Bryce Baker.

Baker is the nation’s No. 20 quarterback and No. 290 overall prospect in the 2025 class, per the 247Sports Composite. He participated in Clemson’s three-day camp as an eighth grader, but this marked his first time competing in the Swinney Camp as a high school prospect.

Of course, this year’s camp gave Baker the chance to work out with first-year Clemson offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Garrett Riley. And according to Baker, Riley loved what he saw from the 6-foot-3, 185-pound rising junior at camp.

“Coach Riley loves what he sees in me and I loved working with coach!” Baker said. “He was telling me that my throwing motion is natural and he loves the potential I have to become even greater!”

Baker is already planning a return trip to Clemson for a game this fall.

His offer list includes North Carolina, Boston College, Duke, Louisville, Maryland, NC State, Penn State, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest – all of which he has collected this year – and after a great experience camping at Clemson, the highly sought-after signal-caller is hoping to earn a coveted offer from the Tigers moving forward.

“I love Clemson and I would love to receive the opportunity to dominate at Clemson!” he said.

In 10 games as a sophomore last season, Baker threw for 1,823 yards and 20 touchdowns to go with 150 rushing yards and three more scores on the ground.

Sunshine State wideout felt ‘at home’ at Clemson

We wanted to pass along an update on one of the standout receivers who was in town for the Swinney Camp this past weekend – Palmetto (Fla.) High School’s Adonis Moise, a 6-foot, 180-pound rising junior in the 2025 class.

We liked what we saw from Moise at camp and he’s a name we’ll be keeping an eye on as the recruiting process progresses.

It was his first time at Clemson and he came away very impressed after the camp and unofficial visit experience.

“I liked a lot about it,” Moise said. “I liked the whole thing. I felt like I was at home.”

Moise has seen his recruitment start to pick up this spring while adding power conference offers from West Virginia, Pitt, Boston College, Vanderbilt and Indiana.

If he were to earn an offer from Clemson, how significant would that be for him and his recruitment?

“It would mean a lot,” he said. “It’s a really good school and it’d probably be one of my top schools and set the bar high.”

Moise tallied 20 catches for 274 yards and three touchdowns as a sophomore last season while also recording 136 rushing yards and another score on just eight carries.