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Clemson has its best chance to win it all since 2020, but that includes a key statistical turnaround
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It’s been a minute since Clemson had preseason national title buzz that was worth buying into. I go back to 2020 when a pre-Draft Trevor Lawrence led the preseason No. 1, albeit under extremely atypical circumstances. The Tigers were fresh off a runner-up season wherein a historically dominant LSU squad was the only thing that stood in their way of winning their 3rd title in 4 years. At the start of the decade, it felt inevitable that Clemson would be back on that stage with several more cracks at glory.
That hasn’t been the case at the halfway point of the 2020s. Clemson has won exactly 0 New Year’s 6/Playoff games during this decade. Four consecutive finishes outside the top 10 of the AP Poll and a 3-6 mark against SEC teams during that stretch — 3 of those losses came last year — have made it fair to wonder if Dabo Swinney can ever get back to having just 1 true championship contender, let alone the 6 that he fielded from 2015-20.
Well, the 2025 version of Clemson is going to answer that question for us … if it can turn around an all-important stat (more on that in a minute).
If you’re a Swinney stan, this might be your last chance to argue that he can still gear up and fire a 98 MPH heater on the black. The Tigers rank No. 1 in America in Bill Connelly’s percentage of returning production, which suggests improvement is imminent from last year’s ACC title squad. That’ll be led by one of the preseason Heisman Trophy favorites, Cade Klubnik, as well as fellow preseason All-Americans TJ Parker and Peter Woods on the defensive line.
It’s the type of roster that gave the “this is why Swinney hasn’t used the portal” crowd more juice than it had at any point since the start of the decade. The irony, of course, is that Swinney made the plunge to the dark side and signed not 1, not 2, but 3 whole transfers during the post-regular season window. He’s still the coach who never had a transfer start a game since the portal became a thing in 2018. But in an adapt-or-die world, Swinney signing more transfers than the rest of the decade combined is at least of some significance.
So, too, is the fact that Swinney deviated from his previous style of in-house staff promotions that carried into the first part of the 2020s. He now has 2 high-priced coordinators that he poached from championship contenders. It’ll be Year 3 of the Garrett Riley experience for Clemson’s offense after Swinney poached the Broyles Award winner from national runner-up TCU, and it’ll be Year 1 of the Tom Allen experience for Clemson’s defense after Swinney poached him from semifinalist Penn State, who had a national championship-caliber unit.
On top of all of that, the Tigers have what should be their best receiver room since 2019. Antonio Williams is back after he tied for the ACC lead with 11 touchdown grabs, as is sophomore-to-be TJ Moore, who was borderline un-guardable against Texas’s elite secondary when he racked up 116 yards on 9 catches in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal loss. Shoot, we could even see — wait for it — transfer receiver Tristan Smith carve out a significant role using his 6-5 frame to win battles outside the hashes.
All of that is great, and I suppose Clemson being at 18-to-1 to win a title is more promising than the 33-to-1 and 65-to-1 odds that fellow ACC contenders Miami (FL) and SMU, respectively, enter the season with.
RELATED: Check out Saturday Down South’s list of the best sports betting apps if you’re interested in betting on Clemson’s CFP odds, win total, etc.
But there’s a “but.” It’s a key thing to remember with any sort of national title conversation that involves Swinney’s squad.
In the last 4 seasons, Clemson is 0-4 against teams that finished inside the AP Top 10. In the 12-team Playoff era, wherein the Tigers will be tasked with beating 3-4 teams of that caliber to win a title, that’s still a daunting reality. The last time that Clemson beat a team that finished inside the AP Top 10 was in the 2020 ACC Championship when Notre Dame moonlighted as an ACC team during the COVID season.
Ask yourself this — what’s Clemson’s best win from 2021-24? Here are your candidates:
- 2021 — W, 48-27 vs. Wake Forest (finished No. 15)
- 2022 — W, 34-28 at Florida State (finished No. 11)
- 2022 — W, 39-10 vs. UNC in ACC Championship (finished unranked)
- 2023 — W, 31-23 vs. Notre Dame (finished No. 14)
- 2024 — W, 34-31 vs. SMU in ACC Championship (finished No. 12)
I’d go with the SMU win as the biggest because obviously, that got Clemson into the Playoff for the first time since 2020. Never mind the fact that the Tigers nearly blew a 17-point lead in the 4th quarter against a program in its first year in a Power Conference during the 21st century, and they only made the expanded Playoff as a 3-loss team because conference titles were prioritized more than any previous era of the sport.
But I digress.
The reason why the skeptics of Clemson’s schedule had a weak argument during the 2015-20 era was because the Tigers beat those AP Top 10 finishers on a regular basis. They went 9-4 in those games during that 6-year window. To say that it’s been a different story since then would be an understatement.
That sounds like it’s picking nits at a program that’s riding a streak of 14-consecutive AP Top 25 finishes. Maybe it is. But maybe it’s the perspective that’s needed whenever Clemson is discussed as a real national championship threat again. The Tigers’ best wins of the last 4 seasons all came against teams that would be firmly on the bubble to make the 12-team Playoff. As impressive as it was that Klubnik and the Tigers gave Texas everything it could handle in that first-round Playoff game in Austin, it was still a team that got gashed for 292 rushing yards and finished 4 wins vs. AP Top 10 finishers shy of taking home a title.
Perhaps Allen will turn that around with an elite defensive line, and Klubnik could be Clemson’s first Heisman finalist since Lawrence in 2020. But if there’s one thing we know about winning a title in the 12-team Playoff era, it’s that while there’s more grace than ever, you won’t be the last team standing with obvious holes on your roster. In the first part of the decade, Clemson’s holes have been obvious. They sunk any path to a title run. It remains to be seen if Swinney has finally plugged them up so that the Tigers can set sail like they once did.
This looks like the last chance to right the ship.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
