South Carolina Football: Transfer rival quarterback with harsh words for former Clemson team
By Kevin Miller
It has been about five months since South Carolina football took down their in-state rival. DJ Uiagalelei was the starter for Clemson that day, and the Gamecock defense made life difficult on the quarterback. After the season, the former five-star signal caller decided to transfer away from Dabo Swinney’s program and enrolled at Oregon State.
Uiagalelei is now entrenched in a quarterback battle in Corvallis, and the Beavers are hoping to build on their first top-20 finish in the AP poll in over ten years.
The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman released a story earlier in the week in which the 6’5″, 250-pound quarterback talked about adjusting to his new situation at Oregon State, his old situation in Clemson, and how his quarterback friends are getting drafted later this week and he is not.
In Feldman’s story, Uiagalelei had some less-than-flattering things to say about his former team. Perhaps it was because earlier in the conversation he had been asked to talk about his friends (and fellow 5-star quarterbacks from the class of 2020) Bryce Young and CJ Stroud being Heisman Trophy finalists (with Young winning the award) and likely 1st-round draft picks in this week’s draft. Regardless of the reason, though, DJU had some harsh comments about his former offense.
“I didn’t want to do what I was doing at Clemson…I didn’t really like what we did there scheme-wise. I didn’t think we did very much. I thought it was very basic. It didn’t help me out as a quarterback [or] play to my strengths. I wanted to go somewhere that would develop me for the NFL.”
When asked about the differences between Oregon State’s offense and Clemson’s, Uiagalelei added, “This has been definitely different…The scheme is totally different than what we were doing at Clemson. I feel like it’s a lot better…all the stuff I wanted to do at Clemson but we weren’t doing. It’s exciting.” He expressed some frustration with Dabo Swinney and former offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter and said Clemson has, “gotta fix some stuff.”
Unfortunately, Oregon State doesn’t play Clemson next season (unless the two meet up in a bowl game). The bulletin board material for that game would have been incredible for college football fans.