Clemson's D.J. Uiagalelei takes center stage vs. Notre Dame (2024)

CLEMSON, S.C. — D.J. Uiagalelei’s father knew early that his son had been gifted an arm that wasn’t normal. Dave Uiagalelei isn’t a quarterbacks coach, and he didn’t play high school football. But his friends called him “The Halftime Show” at games when he would throw the ball 70 to 75 yards down the field. His uncle was a decorated high school quarterback in Hawaii.

So Dave knows a cannon when he sees one. It’s why he recalled this week the time that he first pitched his son to a Power 5 program.

D.J. was 6.

On Saturday, D.J. will have the nation’s attention as the starting quarterback for No. 1 Clemson against No. 4 Notre Dame. Uiagalelei made his first start in a win last week against Boston College, days after Trevor Lawrence, the junior Heisman Trophy frontrunner, tested positive for COVID-19. Lawerence will travel with the Tigers, but will not play as he goes through ACC return-to-activity protocols.

From growing up with humble financial roots in Inland Empire, Calif., to representing the Polynesian community, perfecting the back-shoulder throw and making the first move with Clemson, here are 22 scenes, one for each game of Notre Dame’s home winning streak that Uiagalelei and Clemson will try to end Saturday.

1. His father cried.

Uiagalelei led Clemson from an 18-point deficit to an eventual victory last week. Despite not finding out he’d be the starter until Thursday afternoon, the true freshman dazzled, showing off his arm and poise. After the game, Dave said he had 442 text messages on his phone.

As of Tuesday, the former celebrity bodyguard had responded to about 200 of them. He also fielded plenty of phone calls about D.J., which stands for “David Jr.”

“Most people called me and cried. And I cried with them,” Dave said. “I tried to call everyone I know that helped out. … We were blessed by so many people.”

2. Indeed, Dave is the first to say that it “took a village” to help him and D.J.’s mother, Tausha, raise their two sons, D.J. and Matayo. Dave quit his job as a celebrity bodyguard when the hours got to be too grueling and a young D.J. started asking why his dad was never home. Working 9-to-5 jobs, however, paid significantly less. When finances got tight, the Uiagalelei family got help with necessities such as food, groceries and rent. Aunts, uncles, coaches and friends — they all pitched in.

“I want people to know that there are actually good people out there that help other people,” Dave said. “We’re one of those stories.”

3. D.J. remembers times when he didn’t have a lot to eat, but he also remembers his parents doing whatever it took to support his athletic career. That meant driving D.J. to and from baseball practice, oftentimes an hour away, and in Dave’s case, advocating for his son’s football talent early. Dave said he met Pete Carroll when he was running a camp and the head coach at USC. Dave’s younger brother was a coach at the camp, and D.J. was about 6.

“I told Pete, ‘Pete, you’re going to offer (D.J.) one day,’ and Pete laughs,” Dave said of the current Seattle Seahawks coach. “And in my head, I wasn’t laughing. I was for real.”

4. Because finances were tough, Dave asked his sons when they were young to please do what they could to get scholarships to attend college. He and Tausha couldn’t afford an education for them otherwise. Division I, Division II, he didn’t care. That perspective helps explain why the Uiagalelei family is so excited in the stands on game day.

“All of this is just icing on the cake,” Dave said. “We won already.”

5. Uiagalelei had offers from nearly every major program in the country. Notre Dame, however, was not one of them. The Fighting Irish’s staff sent mail and information to Uiagalelei’s high school coaches, but never aggressively recruited the five-star quarterback. Would he have been interested?

“Maybe, if they recruited me. Notre Dame is a great program,” Uiagalelei said. “It could have been in the conversation, I’m not sure. I would have had to have taken a visit there.”

6. Instead, Uiagalelei essentially recruited himself to Clemson. His high school coach, Jason Negro, asked Uiagalelei when he was a junior if there was a school that hadn’t offered him yet that he was hoping would. Uiagalelei said Clemson. Negro made a call. Here’s what Tigers QB coach Brandon Streeter recalled in December at a signing day event for boosters about his first phone call with Uiagalelei:

“I said, ‘Listen. I’ve heard that you have some interest in us. And after I’ve watched your film, I’ve got a lot of interest in you.”’

7. Clemson coach Dabo Swinney remembers the first time he saw Uiagalelei throw a football. It was in June 2018 at Clemson’s camp, which Uiagalelei made plans to attend, knowing that Swinney doesn’t offer quarterbacks until he sees them live first. The offer came immediately.

“The first time I saw him throw the ball, he doesn’t even grab the laces,” Swinney said of Uiagalelei’s big hands.

“I’m like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, someone’s going to get hurt. He can’t just throw the ball to anybody.’ It was just different. He’s got a cannon. I think he was trying to really show it off in front of us when he got here, and man those kids, it was a tough sight to watch some of those guys trying to catch those balls.”

8. Speaking of Uiagalelei’s size, Dave said his son weighed about 125 pounds in the third grade. He’s currently 6-4, 250 pounds.

9. After Uiagalelei filed his National Letter of Intent in December, Swinney could publicly talk about the QB for the first time. The Tigers’ 12-year head coach knows that putting pressure on freshmen can be a fine line to walk. But with D.J., he held nothing back.

“He can do anything. That’s what they said about Trevor, too, when he came in.”

10. Uiagalelei is half Samoan, a quarter Black and a quarter German. To learn how to pronounce his Polynesian last name, Swinney spelled it out phonetically on his smartphone during the recruiting process. Though the correct way to say it is ooh-ee-AHN-guh-luh-lay, D.J. has inevitably heard his fair share of wacky variations. His favorite?

“I think, like, Wiggle-luh-lee,” he said. “That was one that was pretty funny.”

11. Jokes aside, D.J.’s last name is important to his family. Dave said respect is a crucial tenant of the Samoan community that D.J. understands.

“In the Polynesian community, you don’t want to do anything bad because they’re not just going to judge you. They’re going to judge your parents, they’re going to judge your family,” Dave said. “It’s really big in the Polynesian community how you handle yourself in the general public.”

12. D.J. looked up to Polynesian quarterbacks when he was younger, including Jeremiah Masoli and Marcus Mariota at Oregon. Masoli is his all-time favorite QB. But he also drew inspiration from Jack Thompson, nicknamed “The Throwin’ Samoan,” as well as Marques Tuiasosopo, George Malauulu and Tua Tagovailoa. Tua’s younger brother, Taulia, is currently Maryland’s quarterback.

“It’s a big thing just to show that us Polynesians, we don’t have to play in the Pac-12 or play different places,” D.J. said. “I know when Tua as a Polynesian quarterback went to the SEC, that was a huge thing playing at ‘Bama. Me coming out to Clemson, I think it just shows all the Polynesians out there you can play wherever you want if you have the talent.”

13. Uiagalelei’s talent was evident early, but when he first got to high school, all he wanted to do was throw the deep ball. Over his four years at St. John Bosco in California, he started to refine a new skill: the back-shoulder ball. He repped it regularly. Uiagalelei flashed that part of his skill set midway through the third quarter last week with a perfectly placed 8-yard throw to senior slot receiver Amari Rodgers.

“The deep ball … that’s what his bread and butter is,” said Steven Lo, his high school offensive coordinator. “(But) he throws the back-shoulder ball incredibly well with a ton of feel. His placement, his spot, his touch, it gets better and better every single year.”

14. Opposing high school coaches who had to face off against Uiagalelei also noticed something else about Clemson’s future QB. He’s a master of working through his progressions.

“We saw him go down a couple receivers, down to this third receiver in the state championship game that we played him in. That’s not normal for a high schooler,” said Justin Alumbaugh, the coach of De La Salle (Calif.) “And to be honest, it’s not all that normal for college kids either.”

That goes hand-in-hand with picking up blitzes and throwing hot, which Uiagalelei also displayed Saturday with the first touchdown pass of his career:

TOUCHDOWN TIGERS!

DJ to ETN for a 35-yd TD! #ALLIN 🐅🐾

Watch live on ABC or here: https://t.co/lu6NuCdXJ2 pic.twitter.com/fWJC54TUCg

— Clemson Football (@ClemsonFB) October 31, 2020

15. Uiagalelei’s savvy showed in middle school. His private quarterbacks coach, Chris Flores from STARS in Southern California, remembers taking a team of middle schoolers to an invite-only tournament full of high school teams at USC. With Uiagalelei as an eighth-grade QB, the team practiced for only about three days before entering. But under Uiagalelei, STARS went undefeated in pool play, won the first two rounds of the playoffs and lost only to a Mater Dei High School team led by future Georgia QB J.T. Daniels, future USC WR Amon-Ra St. Brown and future Cal WR Nikko Remigio, with a slew of other Division I prospects.

“He was really able to just continue to figure these high school defenses out and just pick and choose where he wanted to go, pick his spots, make his throws,” Flores said. “It just blew my mind.”

16. Flores was on the phone with Uiagalelei right before the freshman found out he’d be starting against Boston College. Flores said Swinney walked into the film room, told Uiagalelei to say hi to Flores for him and asked him to hang up the phone because he needed to talk to him.

“I said, ‘Dude are you in trouble? What’d you do?’ And he’s like, ‘I don’t know. I’ll call you back,”’ Flores said.

When Uiagalelei called back with the news, Flores — who was actually in town visiting — and Uiagalelei canceled lunch plans and got busy preparing. Flores’ first piece of advice:

“When you’re in trouble, find No. 9 (running back Travis Etienne), find No. 3 (Rodgers), and they’ll help you get out of it.”’

17. Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott is an analytics-driven industrial engineering graduate, who tends to call things like they are. Hyperbole is not in his nature. It means something, then, when he compared Uiagalelei last week to three different quarterbacks: Patrick Mahomes for the ability to throw off the back foot, Deshaun Watson for the ice-water-in-the-veins mentality and Lawrence for the rifle arm.

18. That arm, however, could have gone to the baseball diamond instead of the football field. Baseball was Uiagalelei’s first love. He even asked his mother to let him drop out of school and send him to the Dominican Republic when he was 12, so he could be like legendary Yankees closer Mariano Rivera. Uiagalelei pitched for St. John Bosco as a junior, when he took the mound for the first time since eighth grade.

“His fastball was about 92, 93 mph,” said St. John Bosco baseball coach Don Barbara. “Might have touched 94.”

Baseball is “always a thought in my head,” Uiagalelei said in September, but he’s sticking with football for now.

19. Then there’s the basketball court. Beaux Collins is an incoming wide receiver in Clemson’s Class of 2021 and played football at St. John Bosco with Uiagalelei, who mesmerized on the hardwood, too.

“My first time playing pick-up basketball with D.J. at school in the gym my sophom*ore year, seeing how good he is at basketball blew me away,” Collins said.

The football staff gives its team a few weeks off each year after the season with no structured training requirements and opens up the basketball gym for pick-up games.

“He’s shooting 3s like he’s Steph Curry. He’s got, like, 80 percent accuracy beyond the arc and he’s out there dunking on a coast-to-coast trip,” Lo said. “Going down there just slamming it down the lane.

“There’s not a sport or a thing he hasn’t picked up. He could probably pick up, whatever — a tennis racquet and probably figure it out.”

Said Barbara: “There’s no question about it. He’s an amazing athlete. I mean, you could probably put him on a soccer field and he’d do those reversal kicks over his head.”

20. Uiagalelei enjoys bringing what he says is “West Coast Swagger” to Clemson, so he used some stipend money to buy himself a gold chain that says “Big 5inco.” He wears No. 5 because of his all-time favorite player, Reggie Bush, who sent him a message last week wishing him well before the Boston College game. A teammate gave Uiagalelei the Big Cinco nickname, and Dave joked that before now, D.J. wasn’t famous enough to have met Bush. He’s hoping the two can meet in person at some point, though.

“Reggie doesn’t know how big of a fan D.J. is,” Dave said. “I’m not just saying he’s a fan. I mean, he wears the guy’s number.”

Uiagalelei’s musical influences are also from California. Before his first start last week, Uiagalelei listened to the late Nipsey Hussle, from Los Angeles, and Sacramento-born rapper, Mozzy.

21. When he’s not playing football, Uiagalelei has a favorite go-to. He said he’s more like his mom than his dad, whom he blocked on Twitter as a 10th grader because of how proud Dave can be of his son on social media.

“I’d rather no one really know about me,” D.J. said. “I’d rather just chill at the crib and just play some video games.”

Video games don’t sound like they’re Lawrence’s strong suit, so Uiagalelei might have him there. Redshirt sophom*ore defensive end K.J. Henry said this summer that Lawrence particularly struggles at Madden.

“For a quarterback, he is horrible at calling plays on a video game.”

22. But the two have much more in common than not, which now will include playing against Notre Dame as young, five-star quarterbacks. Lawrence beat Notre Dame 30-3 as a freshman in the 2018 Cotton Bowl national semifinal on the way to the national championship.

“We played Trevor Lawrence when he was a freshman,” Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said. “D.J. will be well-prepared for the number of things that we’ll show him.”

(Top photo: Josh Morgan / USA Today)