Clemson football’s season has been headlined by its elite special teams, but its placekicker has stole the show as one of the team’s most productive players. 

That was especially present in the Tigers’ victory over Syracuse on Saturday, with 12 points coming from the boot of Nolan Hauser on four field goals. With the kicks that he made, there are plenty of accolades that the junior has either tied, broken or neared at both the program and the national level. 

The four field goals would be Hauser’s fourth career game of his career. 

First, Hauser’s last field goal was a 54-yarder in the third quarter to be his fourth successful make that is over 50 yards. That broke a record set by B.T. Potter in 2019 and Richard Jackson in 2009, who both hit three.That was also Hauser’s 13th field goal conversion, passing Potter’s record back in 2021. 

The kicks in Saturday’s win also tied Greg Huegel for the single-season record for field goals in program history, which he set back in 2015. He still has at least four games left, meaning he could shatter this record by the time the season ends. 

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The big record is the yards he’s kicked for field goals all season. Hauser’s four kicks amounted to 159 yards in upstate New York, which puts his total at 1,076 total yards over the course of this season.  The record was set a season ago by Ole Miss kicker Lucas Carniero, but Clemson’s kicker only needs 70 total kicking yards to break the record before the end of the season. This record has been from Stat Perform’s available dataset, which dates back to 1996.

Clemson’s offense has continued to sputter out once it crosses midfield, but head coach Dabo Swinney has relied on his special teams unit to get hte job done continuously with kicking field goals. Hauser has won some games for the Tigers on his own as well, hitting five field goals against both Georgia Southern and Florida State to be critical differences. 

Reynolds even goes as far as calling him “Terminator” due to his ability to consistently score trios of points for the Tigers. 

“Half the time I don't even need to watch,” Reynolds said after the game.  “I know it's going through.”

His foot has kept Clemson in the mix for an ACC Championship, although work will need to be done among other teams in the conference for the Tigers to get a tiebreaker over the likes of SMU and Wake Forest. However, Hauser has kept them in it, and based on the program and national records that he’s nearing, he’s showing no signs of slowing down. 

The Tigers will be back in action next Saturday against Georgia Tech, and the game will be broadcast at 12:30 p.m. from the CW Network.