In one of the most intriguing Week 1 games of the college football season, The Battle For Death Valley will be all the rage in about three months. It will be the ACC favorite Clemson Tigers hosting the College Football Playoff-contending LSU Tigers for not only bragging rights in the non-conference, but the chance to end the losing quarterback's Heisman Trophy campaign long before it even begins.
I wrote about it last week by touching on Clemson's chances of beating LSU and ending Garrett Nussmeier's shot at the Heisman. Now I will do the same when it comes to LSU potentially stifling Cade Klubnik enough to a point where he has no shot of winning the Heisman before September is underway. While I think both will be in the mix for it throughout, there is a chance the loser is out of it.
This has everything to do with optics. While the winning team will be afforded the spoils of having the stones to schedule a non-conference game of this magnitude, if it looks bad for the loser, it could come across as doubly bad. No, the losing team will not be out of the College Football Playoff mix, far from it I may add. However, quarterback stocks are precious commodities. Losses always ding them.
Here is really the only way I see Brian Kelly's team ending Klubnik's Heisman run before it even starts.
How LSU can knock Clemson QB Cade Klubnik out of Heisman race fast
In a way, I think a loss for Clemson will be far more devastating for Klubnik's chances of getting to New York than an LSU defeat would be for Nussmeier's candidacy. It is because Clemson will be the presumptive home favorite. Winning in either Death Valley against those Tigers is hard. I would argue that Clemson is the deeper, better and more well-coached team over LSU. Kelly is in shambles now...
What I am getting at is if Klubnik cannot carve up what was a weak Blake Baker defense from a year ago, then he is going to struggle with whatever else is on his schedule. Clemson's ACC schedule is not easy. Plus, the Tigers will have to go up against Clayton White's South Carolina defense to end the regular season in Palmetto. To me, this all comes down to if Klubnik can pick apart a porous defense.
The other narrative at play is Kelly's teams are usually slow starters. They will almost always drop a game early in the season before picking up steam and catching fire later on. Frankly, it is so much better that Clemson gets LSU at home to start the season out. Again, if either quarterback looks varying shades of pitiful, it not only craters their Heisman odds, but their chances of going No. 1.
Yes, Klubnik and Nussmeier are among the most likely candidates to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft next year. Nussmeier's father Doug is the offensive coordinator of a team in dire need of a franchise quarterback. Could the New Orleans Saints draft him. What if they drafted Klubnik? See, the stakes are incredibly high for this Week 1 game, more so that you probably even realized.
The only way LSU ends Klubnik's Heisman campaign is if Baker's defense completely neutralizes him.