Weitz confident in himself heading into the second half of the season

Weitz is confident heading into the final half of the season.

by Ariana Pensy - Correspondent - Fri Oct 20 07:49:19 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON - Jonathan Weitz is confident in himself heading into the final half of the season.

Clemson was fortunate in the kicker department by having BT Potter be the starter for four seasons. Now that Potter is no longer here, the Tigers were hoping to have redshirt freshman kicker Robert Gunn III step right in, who came out of high school ranked the No. 7 kicker in the country by PrepStar.

Things are not quite working out how Clemson or Gunn hoped they would. After missing three field goals in the first three games, the only successful field goal from 23 yards, head coach Dabo Swinney called up the former walk-on, kicker Jonathan Weitz, to come in and be the kicker for the rest of the year. Weitz admires how Gunn is handling things and hopes that he can teach the younger player a few lessons.

“He’s going to make me better and hopefully I can make him better. He has all the talent in the world and I think everyone in this room knows this. He’s got a great leg on him and he’s going to have a really bright future with Clemson,” Weitz said. “I just hope, maybe part of the reason I came back is because he’s going to go on to be one of the best kickers that Clemson’s ever seen and I can help him with that.”

Weitz has not exactly been perfect either. So far, he has missed a field goal in each of his last three games, missing all of these field goals to the left. His most recent miss was on a 51-yard attempt against Wake Forest, although that kick actually helped to grow his confidence.

“I hit the ball as good as I could. I just didn’t assess the wind as good as I could have. I started at middle right, closer to the right post. The wind (was) howling right to left in that endzone. It was pretty strong wind and I think I just didn’t play the wind enough,” Weitz said. “But, talking about how I hit the ball, I walked off to the sideline, I was like, ‘I couldn’t have hit the ball any better.’ It was exactly on my line, exactly how I wanted to hit it.”

Going through the rest of the season, Weitz is certainly the No. 1 kicker right now. The bye week should have helped to improve overall and perhaps fix the issue of missing his kicks to the left. But for Weitz, his confidence is high right now.

“I have no doubt in myself right now,” Weitz said. “I’m super confident going out there and I’m ready to go to Miami and make some field goals.”

Clemson has faced the Miami Hurricanes a total of 20 times up until now. This twenty-first matchup will be the first time since October of 1953 that both teams will come into the game unranked. In that matchup, the Hurricanes would win 39-7 in Frank Howard’s fourteenth season as the Tigers’s head coach.

The Hurricanes are currently coming off of a two-game losing streak, after their bizarre loss to Georgia Tech from a poor decision to run the ball on third down instead of doing a kneel-down, which was subsequently fumbled and ultimately resulted in the game-winning touchdown. Then, they lost 41-31 against North Carolina.

Historically, the Tigers have dominated Miami. In fact, Clemson has not lost to them since October of 2010 when No. 16 Miami defeated unranked Clemson 30-21.

This game has important ramifications for both teams; as both are currently sitting with two losses, the loser of this game will essentially be eliminated from contention for the ACC Championship.