CHARLOTTE – Cade Klubnik sat on the bench by himself as Clemson kicker Nolan Hauser lined up for a 56-yard field goal with three seconds left in the ACC Championship Game.

If Hauser makes the kick, the Tigers win the ACC and head back to the College Football Playoff. If he misses, they are headed to overtime against an SMU team that rallied from a 17-point deficit to tie the game just 13 seconds earlier.

Klubnik could not watch. He put his head down and let the crowd tell the story.

What he heard next was the loud roar from the Clemson fans behind him. Hauser, a true freshman, had done the unthinkable. He made the 56-yard field goal with room to spare as time from the Bank of America Stadium clock expired.

Clemson won 34-31 and was headed back to the College Football Playoff.

Klubnik was in disbelief. He sat in silence for a just a second or two, and then like being shot out of a canon, the quarterback raced on to the field screaming, “We won. We won!” and circled back to the Clemson sideline where some of his teammates caught up and began hugging him.

It was quite an emotional rollercoaster for the junior, who a week earlier was down and depressed and felt like he let his teammates down following a loss to rival South Carolina.

“I sat in my car for close to an hour in the parking lot last week after the game,” Klubnik said. “Truthfully, just pretty much crying because you work all year for something, literally you wake up every single morning and you chase something, and to be that close, and in the moment, you’re thinking, something we’re chasing just got taken away from us.”

When he finally got home the night after the South Carolina game, Klubnik did not want to see anyone. His roommates were watching the Miami-Syracuse game downstairs.

The only shot the Tigers had now to make the CFP was for Syracuse to upset Miam, allowing Clemson to get into the ACC Championship Game where a win would clinch a spot in the CFP. However, Miami went up 21-0 in the first quarter and things did not look good.

“I get to my house and my roommates are all watching the game and I go up in my room, and there’s like four minutes left,” Klubnik said. “Miami is about to go down a drive, and I get to my room and I’m like, I’ll turn on the game, and I turn on the game and there’s two minutes left and Syracuse wins, and I literally sprint downstairs, and I tackle Ronan Hanafin, my roommate, and I’m just screaming with joy.

“I’m like, ‘Just when you think that God is closing the door, he’s opening one up.’ We just had to trust in Him, and I just trusted in Jesus that he was going to make a way through it all. That’s something Coach (Dabo Swinney) has been preaching to us, and that’s something that I truly believe is God is going to go and do things that we don’t quite understand, but in the end, he’s always going to get the glory and it’s always going to be for a purpose.”

This time Klubnik was not going to waste his opportunity. He came out Saturday hitting on all cylinders, throwing three touchdown passes in the first quarter as the Tigers built a 24-7 lead by halftime.

He later threw a fourth TD pass late in the third quarter to give the Tigers a 31-14 lead going into the fourth quarter. But here came Keith Jennings and the Mustangs, as they scored 17-unanswered points, including a touchdown with 16 seconds left to tie the game.

But the Tigers were not done. They still had 16 seconds.

Adam Randall returned the ensuing kickoff 41 yards to the 47-yard line. Then, with nine seconds left, Klubnik hit Antonio Williams on a curl about 14 yards down the field, but Williams quickly turned up field and got an extra three yards before getting down at the SMU 38 with three seconds left on the clock.

When all seemed lost a few minutes earlier, the Tigers still had a chance, just like they did last week when Syracuse stunned everyone and rallied for a victory.

“I really just had to lean on my foundation, and then that’s what I kind of carried throughout the week. It was definitely a weird Sunday and Monday because you’re grieving from the Saturday loss, but you’ve got to transition and go be excited,” said Klubnik, who was named the game’s MVP. “Because I kind of said out there, it’s like, you’re playing outside with some of your friends and your mom tells you you’ve got to come inside, and she tells you you’ve got five more minutes.

“We got five more minutes to go play some football, and that was tonight, and it was really exciting.”

And now Klubnik and the Tigers have five more minutes.