Brent Venables said he was not going to lie. He was surprised when Shaq Smith told him was going to transfer from Clemson.
Smith, though he still had some work to do get where Venables wanted him to be, had made big strides in the spring and put himself in position to start this coming fall for the defending national champions.
“I really thought Shaq was making steady improvement,” Clemson’s defensive coordinator and linebackers coach said Tuesday during Clemson’s 2019 Media Outing at the Allen Reeves Football Complex in Clemson. “He wasn’t where he eventually would have been had he played and stuck around.