Nolan Hauser, bless him, was fantastic on Saturday.
If not for the Tigers’ junior placekicker, Clemson football might have suffered the most catastrophic loss in decades to Georgia Southern. Instead, Hauser connected on all five of his field goal attempts and those 15 points were the difference in Clemson’s 22-7 victory.
That the Tigers had to resort to field goals at all to defeat the Sunbelt Conference Eagles, however, shows just how far the mighty have fallen.
We know Nolan Hauser can kick. We watched him drive home the dramatic 56-yard blast through the uprights that defeated SMU in the 2024 ACC Championship game. Since then, he has been one of the few reliable constants for Clemson.
On Saturday, he bailed the offense out of neutral time and again. After scoring their only touchdown on their second possession, it was the Nolan Hauser one-man show the rest of the way. True freshman quarterback Tait Reynolds was not bad by any stretch, and made his share of gutsy plays, but drive after drive the Tigers’ offense stalled out inside the Georgia Southern red zone.
And each time there was Nolan Hauser to bail them out.
Left hash, right hash, or dead center, Hauser was on the money. Every kick was true as can be. In hindsight, though, how has it come to needing Nolan’s right foot solely to beat someone like Georgia Southern?
This is not to discredit the Eagles. They played hard. But there was a time, not that long ago, that a team like that would expect to come into Death Valley, take a profound beating, and smile all the way to the bank with their multi-million dollar check.
Instead, Georgia Southern truly believed they could win the game. It was a game that was still fully in doubt and limbo until the final six minutes.
Georgia Southern vs. Clemson Game Highlights | 2026 ACC Football
Clemson’s offensive line was, again, porous. The running game, aside from a few QB scrambles and a couple of late bursts from Gideon Davidson, was non-existent. The passing game was ok once Reynolds took over for Christopher Vizzina, who suffered an apparent arm injury, but it was still nothing compared to what fans are used to.
At the end of the day, Clemson won the game. It might have done very little to wash the foul taste of Baton Rouge from the mouths of Tiger fans, but at least it was a victory.
Thank Nolan Hauser for that.
