Note: The following appears in the Georgia Southern football digital gameday guide, available HERE.
During the summer of 2001, Clemson Offensive Coordinator Brad Scott asked me one day, “Has a quarterback ever thrown for 2,000 yards and rushed for 1,000 yards in the same season in college football history?”
I did some research and determined that in fact it had not been done. In 2001, teams played just 11 regular-season games, and statistics in bowl games did not count towards an individual’s national statistics. In fact, the NCAA made the change to include stats in bowl games the following year.
The previous year Woodrow Dantzler had rushed for 947 yards and passed for 1,691 yards in the 11 regular-season games. With a returning group of offensive linemen who would be in their third year as starters, an outstanding running back in Travis Zachery and a solid receiving corps that included highly regarded freshman Derrick Hamilton, Scott thought a 2,000/1,000 season was possible for Dantzler.
Scott, Head Coach Tommy Bowden and I all thought Dantzler would be a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate that season, and we put that belief under his name on the front cover of the 2001 media guide. We believed putting that 2,000/1,000 goal out there in the preseason would give the media something to follow as the season progressed.
And it worked…for the first five games of the season. Through five games, Dantzler connected on 102-148 passes for 1,199 yards and nine touchdowns, a 69.0 completion percentage. He averaged 8.1 yards per pass attempt, a figure that was among the highest in the nation. On the ground, the native of Orangeburg, S.C. native had 102 carries for 561 yards and six touchdowns over the first five games as well.
He was averaging 343 yards of total offense per game, 240 yards passing and 112 yards rushing, easily on pace for the 2,000/1,000 feat.
Two games in the first five stood out. First, he connected on 18-32 passes for 254 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 164 yards and two more scores in a thrilling 47-44 overtime win at No. 9 Georgia Tech.
The next week at NC State and against future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Philip Rivers, he exceeded that performance by completing 23-27 passes for 333 yards and four touchdowns, and he added 184 yards on 23 carries and two touchdowns. The Tigers won 45-37, and Dantzler was the talk of the country. Over the two weeks, he was named national player-of-the-week by four different publications or websites.
The week after the NC State game, USA Today published its midseason candidates for the nation’s best player. Dantzler was first on the list. CBS Sportsline ranked its top candidates for the Heisman Trophy, and Dantzler was named the leading candidate.
The sixth game of the year was Clemson’s Homecoming game against North Carolina, a team that featured a strong defense led by Julius Peppers. Clemson had improved to No. 13 in the AP poll and the game was nationally televised by ESPN in its noon time slot.
I knew this was a great opportunity for Dantzler, because every 3:30 p.m. game in the nation would have its press box televisions tuned to see what Dantzler would do next.
Unfortunately, it was Peppers and the Tar Heel defense that had the remarkable day. They dominated the Tigers 38-3 and held Dantzler to 73 passing yards and 43 rushing yards. Highlights of Peppers and the Tar Heels ran on college football shows across all the networks, day and night.
Still, Dantzler continued to put up outstanding numbers. The 2001 season was the year of 9/11 and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. Clemson’s game against Duke that had been scheduled for Sept. 15 was moved to Dec. 1. It created a rare situation where the South Carolina game was not Clemson’s last game of the regular season.
It became Dantzler’s Senior Day game, and he had another memorable performance, passing for 243 yards and four touchdowns, and rushing for 135 yards and a score. With 5:59 left in the third quarter, he scored on an 18-yard run down the Clemson sideline, and that play put him over 1,000 rushing yards for the season. He had already eclipsed the 2,000-yard passing mark.
He finished the regular season with 1,004 rushing yards and 2,360 passing yards to become the first FBS player with 2,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in the same season. He would go on to pass for 218 yards and rush for 57 yards in the Humanitarian Bowl win over Louisiana Tech.
Fourteen years later in Clemson’s run to the 2015 season national championship game, Deshaun Watson passed for 4,109 yards and rushed for 1,105 yards to become the first FBS player to post a 4,000/1,000 season. It has been done just once since, by Kyler Murray (Oklahoma) in 2018, when he had 4,361 passing yards and 1,001 rushing yards.
A look to the FBS stats for the 2025 season shows that only two players (Colton Joseph of Old Dominion and Byrum Brown of South Florida) passed for at least 2,000 yards and rushed for at least 1,000 yards. They did it in 12 games. With only two players duplicating what Dantzler did 25 years ago during this more wide-open era, it gives credibility to Dantzler’s accomplishment.
A common discussion today among Tiger fans asks the following.
“What would Dantzler do in today’s offenses? Could he have joined Watson as a 4,000/1,000 quarterback? Could he have been given a shot at quarterback in the NFL with his skill set?”
Whenever I see Dantzler today, I tell him he was born 20 years too soon.