Clemson’s Woody Dantzler was ahead of his time. How he thrived as a dual-threat QB

Tommy Bowden, if he wanted, could go on and on about the character and the leadership, the strength and the speed, the conditioning and the consistency of the player most responsible for Clemson football’s return to national prominence at the turn of the century.

But in reflecting on Woody Dantzler, the star quarterback of Bowden’s best Clemson team, the former Tigers coach kept coming back to one phrase.

“The first.”

All of these years and seasons and shotgun spread offenses later, there’s no simpler or better way to quantify what Dantzler meant to Clemson and college football at large. The NCAA maintains a list of every Division I FBS quarterback to throw for 2,000 yards and rush for 1,000 in a single season, and it’s chock full of Heisman Trophy winners and NFL standouts.

Vince Young. Cam Newton. Johnny Manziel. Lamar Jackson. Jalen Hurts. But with every new entry, the first remains the same: “Woody Dantzler, Clemson, 2001.” A lasting reminder that before dual-threat quarterback dominance was all the rage, a no-frills kid from Orangeburg, South Carolina, did something nobody else at the position had ever done for the Tigers.

And if Dantzler were a starting quarterback circa 2023?

“He would be perfect,” Bowden said. “The 2,000-1,000 he accomplished, the first in the NCAA? That would probably be a 3,000-1,500 today.”

Dantzler, who left Clemson holding 53 school records, will pick up another honor Monday when he’s formally inducted into the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame with seven other honorees, including South Carolina wide receiver Robert Brooks and NBA All-Star Jermaine O’Neal.

For Dantzler, 42, the honor wasn’t something he specifically sought or campaigned for. Long at peace with the close of the football chapter of his life, he’s been living happily in the Upstate for years, taking as much joy in his motivational speaking and his work as a pharmaceutical sales rep and the quiet moments with his wife and two daughters as he did the long touchdown runs.

But the formality and eternity of it all — flash forward 50 years and his name will still be there, enshrined in the hall among dozens of others South Carolina sports legends and paired with his stupefying Clemson stats — does give Dantzler a sense of validation.

“So many people miss out on greatness because they don’t want to deal with the process,” Dantzler told The State. “Process is where it happens. Getting this is just validation for me of going through the process, sticking with it and figuring a way to get through it.”

‘A combo of both’

That process began in Orangeburg, an hour south of Columbia, where a young Dantzler (born Woodrow Dantzler III) drew inspiration from such Black quarterbacks as NFL stars Randall Cunningham and Warren Moon before developing into an all-state talent of his own at Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School.

Life back then was simple. Dantzler, in an interview for this story, referred to his teenage self as “naive” four times and meant it exclusively as a compliment. He wasn’t weighed down by NFL dreams or grueling college decisions or an underlying worry that he, as a Black quarterback, might be shoehorned into a different position by a coach doubting his understanding of the position.

“Football was not my life,” he said. “I played it, but you couldn’t find me on Saturdays and Sundays watching the games. That wasn’t me.”

As such, Dantzler never had a top five schools list. He barely took any college visits. He chose Clemson because of his relationship with wide receivers coach Rick Stockstill, his area recruiter. That’s it.

Dantzler redshirted his first season at Clemson in 1997 and played intermittently in his second year under coach Tommy West. In hindsight, his performance in the 1998 season opener against Furman (12 carries for 65 yards on a single scoring drive) certainly tracked.

Then change and injury presented opportunity. Clemson fired West late in the 1998 season and replaced him with Bowden, formerly of Tulane. And when Bowden’s 1999 starting quarterback, Brandon Streeter, went down in Week 4 against UNC, he turned to Dantzler. End result: 213 total yards and a game-clinching 56-yard rushing touchdown off the bench in a 31-20 win.

“Brandon was a very smart quarterback, a very accurate thrower, but didn’t have great running skills,” Bowden said. “Woody was a combo of both. The offense that we had in the North Carolina game really wasn’t made for him. His athleticism just took over there.”

Watching Dantzler glide across the field at 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, stocky enough to bounce off enough defenders and more than fast enough to jet past them, all Bowden could think about was tailoring an offense exclusively to the QB’s skillset with his coordinator, Rich Rodriguez.

They finally got a chance to do that heading into Dantzler’s junior season, and the rest was statistical history via designed quarterback runs and sprint-out pass plays and the sort of magic that just manifests itself when the best athlete on your team touches the ball every snap.

Dantzler was a legit midseason Heisman Trophy and All-American candidate in 2000 before an ankle injury slowed his progress and pursuit of the 2,000-1,000 mark; healthy in 2001 with even more Heisman hype, he hit that historic milestone while picking up first-team All-ACC honors at QB.

Amid his many feats, some highlights:

• Dantzler graduated as Clemson’s career leader in total offense with 8,798 yards and still holds the record for Clemson career quarterback rushing yards with 2,761 yards.

• No Tiger has more single-season games (five) or career games (11) of 100-plus rushing yards and 300-plus total yards than Dantzler from 1998-2001. That includes a career-high 517 total yards (still third in school history) against N.C. State as a senior.

• Outside of holding Clemson’s single-game QB rushing yards record with 220 against Virginia in 2000, Dantzler also has the most rushing yards in a three-game sequence (520 in 2000) of any player in Clemson history, quarterback or otherwise.

• And he still boasts two of Clemson’s top seven single-game completion percentages and is on the throwing end of The Catch II, his 50-yard completion to receiver Rod Gardner that still ranks among the most iconic moments in the Clemson-South Carolina rivalry.

That’s a lot of snaps, a lot of runs and a lot of hits. All as the MVP of two Bowden-coached Clemson teams that played some high-quality football, peaking in 2000 with a 9-3 record and final AP Top 25 ranking of No. 16 in 2000, the team’s best in any season from 1991 to 2012.

Simple question: Did he ever get tired? Dantzler laughed.

“I never got tired,” he said.

‘A beautiful thing’

Andy Solomon is the executive director of the S.C. Athletic Hall of Fame. As his organization’s nominating committee whittles down a list of candidates from roughly 200 to 35 to seven names each cycle, he said members ponder three questions above all others.

No. 1: Does a candidate have the credentials? No. 2: Do they have strong ties to South Carolina, preferably as a native? No. 3: Do they pass the good citizen test?

“And of course, with Woody, he was all three,” Solomon said.

Dantzler has long credited his father, Woodrow Dantzler II, for reinforcing to him that football was something he did, not something he was. That allowed him to make a markedly smooth transition into the non-football aspects of his life after his Clemson and NFL careers.

There are no hard feelings about, say, the fact his record-setting 2001 season didn’t even warrant him a Heisman Trophy top 10 finish. Or that he went undrafted. Or that his short-lived NFL career with the Cowboys and Falcons included position changes to running back, safety and wide receiver.

All memorable but closed chapters for someone who never saw football as his identity but rather an avenue through which to express his true identity. (For Dantzler, that’s his strong Christian faith.)

“It’s almost like for prisoners: When they get out of prison, they’ve been institutionalized,” he said. “They’ve been in prison so long they don’t know how to operate in the real world. … Football has a way of doing that to people when you get too wrapped up in it.”

In his post-football life, Dantzler has worked full-time in pharmaceutical sales while devoting a majority of his free time to mentorship and motivational speaking. He’s most passionate about mentoring young people because “they’re the future,” he said, and grappling with things he never had to as a kid — namely, the pressures and adverse effects of social media.

And Clemson’s never far. After all, Dantzler and his family live in Anderson, just 20 miles from campus and the stadium where he dodged too many sacks to count. He remains close with the football team and has worked with the program’s PAW Journey professional development program, as well as select initiatives with Clemson president Jim Clements.

So, yes, even though Dantzler’s locked in on a new chapter of his life — he graduated from Anderson University with a master’s degree in biblical and theological studies earlier this month — getting the call from the S.C. Athletic Hall of Fame and hearing that he’d been selected still floored him.

And it came with a fun overlap: The hall’s current president is Bill D’Andrea, a longtime Clemson athletics administrator who was a mentor to Dantzler during his Clemson playing days and later became a close friend. D’Andrea called Dantzler to break the news in January.

“To have him call me, man, it was more than just icing on the cake,” Dantzler said. “It was like another whole cake. It was just a beautiful thing.”

When Dantzler’s formally inducted into the Hall of Fame on Monday, achieving what executive director Solomon deems “immortality,” he’ll think of those who helped him get there: his mom, his dad, his high school coaches, his Clemson coaches, his mentors and coworkers and friends.

And Bowden sees it as a worthy honor for a Clemson quarterback whose legacy started with his No. 1 jersey and his No. 1 spot on the NCAA’s 2,000-1,000 list and has since grown in ways that are “making a difference not only in the community but in the state of South Carolina.”

“You like to see that type of guy get rewarded with this type of award,” Bowden said. “I think it’s more pleasing along those lines. Like, ‘Hey, the good guy’s getting what he deserves.’ ”

South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame 2023 class

Inductees will be honored in a Monday ceremony (livestream here).

• Mark Berson, South Carolina men’s soccer coach

• Robert Brooks, South Carolina/NFL football

• Woody Dantzler, Clemson/NFL football

• Dawn Ellerbe, South Carolina/Olympic track and field

• Joe Hamilton, Macedonia High School/Georgia Tech/NFL football

• Jermaine O’Neal, Eau Claire High School/NBA basketball

• Larry Penley, Clemson men’s golf coach

• Charles “Chino” Smith, Negro Leagues baseball (posthumous)