Klubnik talks further on last play at Miami, says it's time to get greedy about winning

Klubnik warms up before Saturday's game at Miami (Photo by Merrell Mann).

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Mon Oct 23 12:30:32 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON – Flush it and move on.

Quarterback Cade Klubnik once again sat in front of the media Monday morning to discuss Saturday’s double-overtime loss to Miami and look ahead to this week, and he was asked about the final play in which he kept the football on the goal line.

Clemson faced a 4th-and-inches at the goal line and needed a touchdown and two-point conversion to tie the game against the Hurricanes. He kept the ball and was tossed for an eight-yard loss to end the game. Both head coach Dabo Swinney and Klubnik said after the game the play was a run call, and that Klubnik simply kept it instead of handing it off to running back Will Shipley.

Klubnik was asked if it was a straight run call or a read-option play.

“Like I said after the game, and I think Coach Swinney said it too, it was supposed to be a run”,” Klubnik said. “I was just trying to make a play. I thought I saw something, and I was wrong, like what I said after the game.”

When he was pressed on whether it was an inside zone run call, Klubnik just shook his head in the affirmative, before talking about the loss, flushing the mistakes, and moving forward.

“Obviously, in a game like that, everybody's going to point to the last one (mistake) and I'm pointing to the last one myself,” he said. “You have to do a whole re-evaluation of the whole game as a whole. There's a lot of plays that we want back, and that's definitely one of them. Just look back at the whole picture and just continue to learn how to grow. I'm thankful for games like that because I think that I'm going to have a long career here. I’ve had great conversations with the coaches and the other guys, and you can go two ways with this. We’re just going to continue to grow and get better every single week.”

Klubnik said the offense is still not taking advantage of its opportunities.

“I think we can get way better. We can get a lot better just as a team,” he said. “We still have so much room to grow, and that's exciting. We're still a very young football team. Now it's just time to build momentum and just continue to get better and just learn. We've got a lot of guys who have had a lot of success in the past in their years of playing football. For the first time, they're not getting as much of that, and it's really good for them. It's really good for me to just know what winning truly takes. It's going to be the best thing that's ever happened for us. We just have to get back and get greedy.”