Chill and Grill: Offensive line bonds over food and swimming

Will Putnam says he's the grillmaster. (Photo: Jim Dedmon / USATODAY)

David Hood · Senior Writer · Wednesday, August 02 2023

CHARLOTTE – The heat and humidity, staples for the middle of the summer in this part of the country, have settled in to stay awhile. What do you do if you’re a college student stuck on campus and need some relaxation? You chill and grill, of course.

Clemson’s football camp starts Friday. Preseason workouts have ended, the preseason interviews are over, and players and coaches now get down to preparing for the 2023 football season.

Once most students leave in early May to head home or travel, many student-athletes are left on campus to catch up on credit hours or prepare their bodies for the upcoming season. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have fun, and senior offensive lineman Will Putnam told the media last week that the big guys up front have two special traditions.

“Yeah, I can’t name one,” Putnam said. “I can name two. So, we have two things. One we call ‘grill and chill.’ Grill and chill. So, what we do is we grill and chill. So, pretty straightforward. It will be at my house. You know we have some grills - I’m the grill master — a title earned, not given.”

Putnam enters 2023 as a three-year starter along the offensive line, including two seasons at guard in 2020-21 and an all-conference campaign at center in 2022. He starts the 2023 campaign having played 2,611 snaps from scrimmage, already the 19th-most in Clemson history, over 47 career games (36 starts).

In other words, he’s been around a while and knows how to eat and grill, staples of offensive linemen everywhere.

“I think we know how to eat the best…go to, right now, the big one’s been the brats. Brats and burgers are the big ones. Occasionally, maybe make some chicken wings and some steaks. So, that’s really big,” Putnam said. “And the second one we do, we call it ‘swim club.’ What we do, the rowing docks, right next to the facility on campus on beautiful Lake Hartwell, and we’ll just go hang out and swim because we realized if we’re going to have 10-15, you know, big boys, that’s a little too much for just some residential apartment pool complex. Water is everywhere. We’re getting on everybody’s nerves. Just not enough room to swim. So, we’re like, we’ll go to the lake, and we started doing that, and it’s been awesome.”

Defensive tackle Tyler Davis said the defensive line loves to eat, but they bond in a different, lazier manner – they float the days away.

“So, we have this apartment complex where most of our teammates live at, and what the d-line does, we usually go to the Ridge, chill in the lazy river,” Davis said. “Chill in the lazy river sometimes, go inside. We don’t really grill like that. We just eat out a lot.”