Cade Klubnik has not started a full season under center, yet the talented signal-caller already has the attention of some of the premier college football programs across the country.
Last season, as a sophomore, Klubnik split backup reps with senior Drew Willoughby while another senior, Kirkland Michaux, led the Chaparrals to a 15-1 overall record and the first 6A-Division II State Championship victory for Westlake High School (Austin, Texas) since 1996.
This fall, Klubnik will run the show.
Since March the 6-foot-2 and 185-pound junior-to-be has been throwing with his teammates three to four times a week to built a rapport as the leader of the team on and off the field.
Over the same period of time Klunik has also begun to rack up scholarship offers. His first offer came on January 27 from Baylor University, shortly after Dave Aranda took over for Matt Rhule after he accepted a head coaching position with the Carolina Panthers.
The next three months saw Auburn, Arkansas, Louisiana State, Miami and Nebraska add their names to his list of offers. Washington became the third Pac-12 school to enter the mix – after Washington State and Arizona State – in mid June.
Klubnik is the third signal-caller to be offered by first-year offensive coordinator John Donovan in the 2022 class and the second from the Lone Star State. Uniquely, Donovan has also coached another former quarterback from Westlake HS, Nick Foles.
Foles, a former third-round pick out of the University of Arizona in 2012, spent the 2019 season with the Jacksonville Jaguars where Donovan was an assistant coach.
“It’s been going really good,” Klubnik said of his relationship with the UW OC.
“I know he’s been coaching with the Jaguars for the last five years. He coached Nick Foles and Blake Bortles, so that is definitely big-time coaching come down from the NFL. He knows how to coach quarterbacks so that’s definitely pretty big.”
Foles’ alma mater became the latest school to offer Klubnik at the end of July, bringing his total count to 16 with several other programs keeping a keen eye. The three-star named Florida State, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Texas A&M as other schools he has heard from that have yet to offer.
With the Pac-12 Conference opting to cancel its 2020 season, for now, it prohibits recruits like Klubnik from being able to visit for a game and gain a greater knowledge of the school.
Even though he has been on college campuses and attended games, including at Texas, Baylor and other schools, Klubnik doesn’t feel he has truly visited any program yet.
Whether the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference elect to follow the Big 10 and Pac-12 remains to be seen. It also isn’t clear how not being able to watch those schools will impact Klubnik and his recruitment.
For now, his focus is solely on gearing up for his junior season.
Due to an Austin-Travis County ban on in-person learning and extra-curricular activities, fall sports for Westlake High School have been suspended until September 7.
Since the Chaparrals first game isn’t until September 25 vs Cedar Park there is still plenty of time for Klubnik and his teammates to get ready for the season. In fact, Friday will mark the first day in two weeks that he can get back to throwing.
Over the past 14 days the Westlake QB has been confined to his bedroom, breaking down film for an hour or two each day while recovering from Covid-19. One of his coaches gave him a different way to watch game film and it has made Klubnik even sharper mentally.
A real life version of the Entertainment Arts video game Head Coach.
“What I’ve learned to do from one of our coaches is you’ll throw on the film of the opponents’ defense and say, ‘okay, they’re running cover four. It’s first and 10. What play am I going to run?’
“And you just roll a game, you don’t know what’s going to happen on offense but you pick the play and act like you’re running the offense. It puts you in the mindset of you having to call the plays and become the coach. It makes you a lot better quarterback.”
In his limited game time last season Klubnik threw for 680 yards, eight touchdowns and just one interception while completing 53 of 69 attempts (.768) in 12 total games. Even though his yards aren’t eye-popping – to be expected for a QB with limited reps – his accuracy is what stands out.
The reason he is so accurate? Attention to detail.
“You learn a lot of stuff from the good plays, but you learn more from the bad ones. I like to watch myself do bad. If I had the best game of my life – the way I think of it – and I throw two bad passes I always have a feeling I did not play good that game.”
