Heading into last weekend’s game against North Carolina, Dabo Swinney had a message for star quarterback Cade Klubnik.

The head coach reminded his star signal caller of who he was and used a superhero reference to try and drive the point home.

“I was like, ‘You’re Batman,'” Swinney said. But my message was more, “You’re Cade Klubnik. Just be Cade.’ And he was awesome. Obviously, a tremendous performance by him.”

The message must have hit the mark. Klubnik had what was by far his best outing of the season, completing 22-of-24 for 254 yards with four touchdown passes in the 38-10 win over North Carolina.

All four scoring strikes came in the first half, marking just the second time in history a quarterback has thrown four touchdowns in one half against a Bill Belichick team. The only other player to do it was Patrick Mahomes, who has three Super Bowl wins under his belt.

“Sometimes, when you get in a situation, you forget who you are,” Swinney said. “Because everybody is telling you what you’re not, and sometimes you can lose your confidence a little bit or whatever, or try to do too much.”

Klubnik experienced his share of struggles during the Tigers’ 1-3 start. He threw four picks over that span after having thrown just six all of last season.

However, on Saturday, we saw a different Klubnik. The one that was expected coming into the season, and the one many thought could be good enough to contend for a Heisman this season. The hope is that performance against the Heels serves as a confidence builder and that Klubnik finally has his swagger back.

“Hopefully that can get him back on track and just playing with the type of confidence that we need him to play with,” Swinney said. “Because he is a really good player and it was good to see him playing free.”

After his stellar performance, Klubnik was presented with a t-shirt of the superhero to mark the occasion.

“I’m Batman,” Klubnik exclaimed.

Photo by Bart Boatwright