Swinney says he can win with all the QBs on the roster, says camp will provide competition

Trevor Lawrence will compete for a starting spot in the fall

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Jun 19, 2018, 1:25 PM

CLEMSON - Dabo Swinney thinks he has three quarterbacks that can get the job done heading into fall camp.

Clemson’s quarterback room has lost three players since the season ended – Zerrick Cooper, Tucker Israel, and Hunter Johnson have all transferred out – leaving incumbent Kelly Bryant, redshirt freshman Chase Brice and true freshman Trevor Lawrence as players who were on the roster during the spring.

Freshman Ben Batson was given a scholarship and will work at quarterback (instead of safety) this fall.

Swinney still likes what he has and continues to state that no player has the starting job wrapped up.

“Well, we still have good depth. Now we have three that I think we can win with, we had four that I thought we could win with, and now we have three,” Swinney said last week. “We’re going to put Ben at quarterback now, obviously he was going to play safety, but we don’t have the depth that we need so he’ll hopefully play.

“He was 5A offensive player of the year in his state, a good player and it’ll be hard to go find a guy better than him at this point. So, we are going to try and build depth with him. Those other three guys, we can win with all those guys, so I think we are in a good spot. There’s a lot of people out there with only one good one and we have three good ones, so we’ll let them battle it out.”

Chase Brice redshirted last season but impressed in the spring

Batson, the son of strength and conditioning coach Joey Batson, has a fan in Swinney.

“Ben is a great player. Ben, going over to Dorman this year was a different experience for him, he was the 5A offensive player of the year, took them to the state championship, athletic, strong and has good size, and he throws the ball well,” Swinney said. “He can really run, he’s really fast. I’ve watched him his whole life, obviously, but he went over and proved what he was capable of doing this year, and we are lucky that we have a guy like that.

“We were going to put him at safety, but we feel like we have a Division 1 player in Ben. He had some offers and with another season like he had this year he probably would have had some big offers because he has all of those measurables that people like so much. This year he was able to have some really incredible production, so we are fortunate that we can get him because it was a position of need. I don’t know if he will end his career there, but we have to have him there for this season for sure.”