Clemson Tigers Star Has Suddenly Disappeared

Going into the season, Clemson Tigers defensive end Will Heldt was widely viewed as a potential breakout player. In fact, his name was littered among NFL Draft boards before he even played a single snap in 2026.

And early on, Heldt delivered, racking up 10 tackles, six tackles for loss and four sacks over Clemson's first three games.

Since then, however, the senior pass rusher has essentially disappeared.

Heldt has eight tackles, a half of a tackle for a loss and zero sacks over his last three contests. He managed just one tackle in the Tigers' win over Charleson Southern last Saturday.

There are still six games left for Heldt to recover, but he went from looking like he was about to have a monster campaign to really struggling (by his standards) pretty quickly.

Because of his size (6-foot-6, 260 pounds) and athleticism, Heldt is still viewed as a potential first-round pick. But it's clear there are some concerns about the upper classman, and his sudden dropoff in production is a bit alarming.

Remember: last year, both Peter Woods and T.J. Parker saw their draft stock plummet after rough campaigns. Now, to be fair, neither player had a good start to the season like Heldt did. But they both went from being perceived as high first-round selections to falling to the back end of the first round and Day 2, respectively.

If Heldt isn't careful, he could suffer the same Day 2 fate as Parker.

There are a lot of good pass rushers slated to be available in the 2027 draft, so Heldt has some fierce competition.

That's why the 21-year-old needs to start producing — now.

It's obviously not so easy as flipping a switch, but Heldt needs to figure out what has gone wrong over the last three weeks and fix it.

The former Purdue defender arrived at Clemson via the transfer portal last season and had a great debut campaign with the Tigers, finishing with 46 tackles, 15.5 tackles for loss and 7.5 sacks. He was already showing signs of breaking out with the Boilermakers, but he absolutely took his game to another level at Clemson.

Heldt appeared to be on a warpath early on this season, as it looked like the veteran was about to one-up himself from the year prior.

But then things just stagnated.

Hopefully, Heldt can recover and put together some more monster games down the stretch to maintain his status as a potential top pick come April.