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Not too long ago, Clemson was a dominant force in college football. The Tigers, led by head coach Dabo Swinney, reached the national championship game four out of five years between 2016 and 2020, but since then, Swinney's team has struggled to reach the same heights.
After falling to LSU in the College Football Playoff national title game in January 2020, Clemson fell to Ohio State in the CFP semifinal the next year and have yet to return to the playoff since then. While missing the playoffs in the four-team era can be understandable, the Tigers have notably not started off the season well over the past few seasons.
In three of the last four years, including 2024, Clemson has lost its season opener. In 2021, it was a 10-3 loss to Georgia, the eventual national champions. Last season, the Tigers were dominated by ACC foe Duke 28-7, a shocking start to a year that nearly skid out of control in October.
Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney claps back at critics
This past week, Clemson dropped its second straight season opener when Georgia manhandled the 14th-ranked Tigers in Atlanta 34-3. And like last season, during which head coach Dabo Swinney faced massive criticism and even feuded with a fan named Tyler from Spartansburg, South Carolina, Swinney is being forced to defend his roster-building philosophy, particularly its lack of high-end transfer portal talent.
After the Georgia defeat, Swinney hit back at his critics on the portal issue.
“We've done it in a unique way,” Swinney said, via ESPN. “Now people want me to go do it some other way. They've lost their freakin' mind. I'm not doing it another way. Everything doesn't go the way you want it every single time, but that doesn't mean you get away from what your foundation is, what you believe.”
It's hard to argue with Swinney and his results. The longtime Clemson coach has two national championships, eight ACC titles, and numerous Coach of the Year awards to his name. He was also one of the few coaches to give Nick Saban's vaunted Alabama teams problems.
However, Swinney's loudest critics will become even more emboldened if the Tigers cannot rise back up and reclaim their contender status. Swinney has admittedly been hesitant and, in some ways, stubborn in ‘getting with the times' and embracing the transfer portal as an effective albeit flawed tool for roster construction.
While that stubbornness works if Clemson is in the playoff and competing for a national championship again, another season like last year, which began with a 4-4 record before being salvaged by five consecutive wins, could further highlight Swinney's flaws for the entire country to see.
