CLEMSON – When Collin Sadler was a freshman, he watched from Memorial Stadium’s white-streaked sidelines as a fellow member of his 2022 recruiting class surged into first place in Clemson’s quarterback race.

Cade Klubnik, a former five-star recruit out of Austin, Texas, had gradually made his push to take the job from incumbent D.J. Uiagalelei over the course of his rookie year, adding a dash of intrigue to the Tigers’ otherwise cookie-cutter, 10-win route to that year’s Orange Bowl.

The understated quarterback battle came to a head in the ACC Championship Game in December against the mighty North Carolina Tar Heels, led by in-state monarch quarterback Drake Maye. 

Opposite Maye, Uiagalelei, who was decreasing in popularity with each passing week and weak pass, got the 28th start of his Clemson career.

It would also be his last.

As quickly as it started with a heroic performance against Notre Dame back in 2020 and a viral clip of head coach Dabo Swinney giving the signal-caller an airplane tour of Clemson’s facility, the Uiagalelei era flickered out with two drives, eight plays and two punts in Charlotte that night.

With North Carolina up 7-0 in the first quarter, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney gestured in Klubnik’s direction, sending the wide-eyed freshman in to defeat the Tar Heels and begin a three-year stint as the Tigers’ biggest– and most discussed– man on campus. 

“Moving forward, Cade will be the starter going in and DJ will be the backup and we’ll keep moving forward,” Swinney said after the 39-10 victory. “(Klubnik) will be the first to tell you he wasn’t ready early (on). But he kept getting ready.” 

With a 279-yard, two touchdown performance, Klubnik was awarded the MVP trophy for that game, and did not miss another start until October of 2025, when he went down with an ankle injury as a seasoned senior. 

Sadler, in the meantime, waited his turn to protect Klubnik after redshirting as a freshman. In between battling injuries, he managed to start in 13 games across the next three seasons, playing both left guard and left tackle as a member of Klubnik’s closest brigade.

The local product’s collegiate career outlived once-impenetrable transfer and fiscal rules. It survived pestering injuries, transfers out and in of the program and a 7-6 campaign in 2025. It lasted through two offensive coordinator changes, a position coach change and boasted another ACC Championship win in 2024.

Now, as one of the seniormost players on the 2026 roster, Sadler– a fifth-year player and Clemson graduate– is living through his own history again.

After Clemson’s 22-7 win over Georgia Southern last Saturday, Swinney announced that true freshman Tait Reynolds would be taking over the starting quarterback duties in the Tigers’ upcoming ACC-opener against North Carolina.

In the win, Reynolds came in on the fourth offensive possession of the game, and like Klubnik that day in Charlotte, he never came out.

“It’s easy to see his talent. He’s got a lot of moxie,” Swinney said of the freshman signal-caller. “He’s way beyond his years from a physical standpoint, obviously. He’s just a really gifted thrower, but he’s a very confident kid. I think the fact that he’s been not a two-sport player, but a two-sport star, you know, this is the guy that’s going to walk to the plate in a tie ball game, you know, two outs and 3-2 [count], and he’s going to, he’s going to hit the game-winner in a championship. That’s just who he is.”

Reynolds finished with 178 passing yards in the victory, completing 59 percent of his 27 pass attempts. The freshman was far from perfect, and Swinney was the first to admit it, but his performance was enough to put him over the edge of Christopher Vizzina, who started the first two games as well as the lone contest Klubnik missed in 2025.

“We just feel like Tait has moved ahead,” Swinney said. “In extended play, especially now that you’ve gotten into some games, you saw some things and he wasn’t perfect but you saw some things that we saw in the spring that were like, okay. Now you see it in real time, we just feel like that’s the decision that needs to be made.”

Cue Sadler.

The only offensive lineman that has played with a quarterback other than Vizzina or Klubnik. 

The only remaining piece of the unit that was on campus when a new era was ushered in in the winter of 2022. 

The lone lineman that remembers Uiagalelei entering the transfer portal and why it meant that much more when the Tigers played his new team, Florida State, the next year.

If anyone is in a position to help Reynolds and the team through this transition, it is the burly big-man.

“My main goal is to feed him confidence,” Sadler said of Reynolds. “I believe that he’s an extremely talented young quarterback. I think that he’s got a great arm. He’s mobile. He’s got all the

attributes that you look for, especially for a player at this level. So, I just want to make sure that he’s comfortable. I want to make sure he’s loose. And yeah, I just want to feed him confidence.”

Confidence will be imperative for Reynolds as well as the rest of Clemson’s offense Saturday, when North Carolina will come to town in hopes of upending the Tigers’ seven-game win streak, including four under Klubnik.

The Tigers and Tar Heels will kickoff at noon at Memorial Stadium, and coverage will be shown on the ACC Network.