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COLUMBIA — When Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney brought former backup kicker Jonathan Weitz back to the roster after Week 3, he said it would either go great or terribly. For a while, it looked like it would be the latter.
Weitz had spent four seasons as a walk-on backup to star kicker B.T. Potter and had never attempted a field goal. He was enrolled in graduate classes at Clemson but was living in Charleston and preparing to start a corporate job in New York when Swinney called on him to return and ease some of the Tigers’ early kicking woes.
But Weitz missed a 29-yard potential game-winner in his first game against Florida State, and it looked like Swinney’s kicker experiment might be a failure.
But a second-chance career that started with that low point ended on a high note: Weitz went 3-for-3 on field goals in Clemson’s 16-7 win over rival South Carolina on Saturday, outscoring both offenses. Every one of his field goals — A 50-yarder, a 49-yarder and a 42-yarder — were longer than any he had made previously.
Even better for the in-state kicker: He was critical to the Tigers’ win, which gave them revenge after last season’s 31-30 defeat at home.
“I played in national championships and was on teams in the playoff and lost those games, but the one that I remember is walking off the field a loser to the Gamecocks,” Weitz said. “To come here and do this, it’s special.”
Weitz never imagined he’d have one more chance at the Gamecocks, and after his up-and-down season, most people probably didn’t expect he’d be one of the game’s heroes. Weitz hadn’t found any consistency in the kicking game, entering the game 8-of-14 in his eight games.
He had gone 1-for-2 on field goals in five of his nine games and 0-for-1 in another. He was 2-for-2 against Miami and 1-for-1 against Notre Dame. Through all of it, Swinney kept…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/clemson-football-kicker-jonathan-weitzs-060937621.html
Author : Greenville News
Publish date : 2023-11-26 06:09:37
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