Content available exclusively for subscribers
Jets rookie QB Cabe Klubnik is going from the frying pan to the fryer.
Going through the wringer for four years at Clemson under intense scrutiny as a 5-star recruit, everyone wanted, who was part of a stretch for the Tigers that perhaps didn’t go as planned, to being drafted to be a QB in New York.
Not blaming Klubnik for the Tigers’ underachieving the last four years. That would be patently unfair. But you know how it works in football – the QB often gets too much of the blame, and too much of the credit.
But when you hear him talk, whether it was after he was picked by the Jets in the fourth round or during the rookie minicamp, he seems like a young man who needs a redshirt year with the Jets to decompress from four years at Clemson, which perhaps dented him a little bit.
What do I mean by a redshirt year? Simple. We all know Geno Smith is going to be the starting QB, so I’m not talking about competing for the starting job. It goes deeper than that. He should not be in the conversation for the #2 job.
He needs a year to recover from his Clemson experience, a year to work on his mechanics and progression scans, and a year to recover from a season he took a beating and suffered a couple of different injuries.
So that is what I mean by a redshirt year. None of this one snap away nonsense, like that season when they were trying to fix Zach Wilson, and then Aaron Rodgers got hurt in the opener, and Wilson’s rehab year went by the wayside. Klubnik needs a true redshirt year.
You hear the kid talk, and he’s a little defensive about what happened at Clemson.
When I saw the quote where he said, “I’m a winner,” I thought perhaps that’s not the way to go.
“In my mind, I’m a winner,” Klubkik said Saturday at the Jets’ rookie minicamp. “I don’t mean that in a boastful way. I think that’s the mentality you have to have as a quarterback, and I think that my résumé has kind of showed that as well.”
Maybe I’m old-school, but I think others should proclaim an athlete “a winner,” not the athlete himself.
He said the same thing to the New York media after he was drafted.
“I’m a winner and I’m a competitor,” Klubnik said on the third day of the draft after the Jets selected him.
Also, during that press conference on day three of the draft, Klubnik was asked about what happened at Clemson last year, a disappointing year for the Tigers, one they were expected to compete for a national championship, but didn’t even make the college football playoffs.
“I don’t want to get into that to be honest,” Klubnik said. “I’m just celebrating being a Jet now, if that’s alright with you.”
Powerful stuff. Revealing somebody who is coming off a living hell from a sports standpoint (not a real-world tragedy living hell, of course).
I’m just telling you, man, this kid needs the Jets to take it real slow with him.
While he’s made it clear he doesn’t like talking about Clemson’s rough season last year, he has opened up at times when pushed.
“[Clemson] is a tough place to be,” he said about the team’s 3-5 start. “It’s a really tough place to be. My senior year, with 19 starters coming back and huge aspirations and dreams that we had as a team, we didn’t really fulfill those.”
Well, if Clemson is a “tough place to be,” how should we describe the New York market? While it’s not as tough as it used to be, it’s still the New York market.
This article was meant to criticize Klubnik, who seems like a nice kid.
Just saying, reading the tea leaves, it might be best to keep him off the field during the regular season at all costs, and let him heal from his Clemson experience and work on his game.
If something happened to Geno, there should be a veteran backup in place. And if that veteran backup needs to be the starter for a while, they should bring in another veteran to back up that fill-in player.
Klubnik might need a time-out in 2026.
May 12, 2026
Premium will return by 9:30 pm (or sooner) on Wednesday.
