There have been flashpoint moments in the last three Clemson seasons, where change arrives and there’s no option but to evolve.
Yet Dabo Swinney keeps pushing forward, foraging through the obvious blind spot with a steel tank of coaching capital.
Clemson lost seven games from 2015-2020, won two national titles and played for two others. Clemson has lost 12 games since the beginning of the transfer portal era in 2021, and hasn’t returned to the College Football Playoff.
Every other FBS program uses the transfer portal to supplement its roster. Clemson does not.
It’s not that difficult to figure out.
“We’ve talked about how great it would be to finish 7-1 in our league,” Swinney said earlier this week. “We put ourselves in position. We weren’t in position last year.”
How’s that for evolving and raising the bar of expectation?
Clemson, once the darling of the College Football Playoff era, is fired up to finish third in the ACC.
Because if the Tigers win at Pittsburgh Saturday – and that’s a big IF – the best that can come of this season is watching two other teams play for the ACC championship.
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One of those teams, Miami, has never won the ACC title. The other, SMU, paid $100 million last year to join the league after playing footsie for decades in various Group of Five conferences.
Meanwhile there is Clemson, trying to recapture the glory of CFP past by grinding against the grain.
The talent on the Clemson roster isn’t what it once was during the early years of the College Football Playoff, when the Tigers were as big and bad as Alabama. It doesn’t matter if it’s recruiting misses or player development, Clemson isn’t winning games of significance because the other team has better players.
It’s a fairly simple deduction, and one that has played out over and over since the 2021 season, when the NCAA opened the doors to the perfect storm of the transfer portal, NIL and free player movement ― and the game changed forever. Everywhere, that is, but Clemson.
Look, maybe this thing works out. Maybe Clemson beats Pitt, and Miami or SMU loses another league game and the Tigers reach the ACC championship game and win it. Hello, CFP — goodbye change.
Frankly, that’s the worst thing that could happen.
This has become more than losing to North Carolina State and Pittsburgh in 2021, or losing to a bad South Carolina team in 2022, and getting blown out by a Tennessee team playing a backup quarterback.
More than an embarrassing 21-point loss to Duke to start an anticipated bounce back season of 2023, and then losing three more ACC games.
It’s more than missing on a five-star quarterback recruit, or missing on replacing successful assistant coaches.
This is philosophical. There’s a potential answer to Clemson’s most glaring problem — a lack of playmakers on both sides of the ball — and Swinney refuses to embrace it.
Before we go further, Swinney is elite at what he does. Coaching and developing players on the field, and investing and pouring himself into the future of players long after football.
He’s exactly what you want from a college football coach. But the transfer portal blind spot is eroding his legacy.
It’s easy to say there’s no Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence, and that’s a completely fair assessment. But it’s so much more than that.
Clemson hasn’t had a receiver that can win consistently on the outside and put defenses in conflict since 2020. The elite defensive line, the foundation of the program under Swinney, no longer controls games.
The tough and talented but nationally overlooked recruits of the past – the overachievers like Hunter Renfrow, James Skalski and K’Von Wallace – aren’t developed anymore.
An answer – not the answer – is right in front of Swinney. Nick Saban embraced the portal. So did Kirby Smart and Jim Harbaugh and Ryan Day and every other coach playing for a national title since the transfer portal and free player movement arrived.
There are potential locker room chemistry issues, and future complications of relying too much on the portal. But this isn’t about wholesale changes.
This isn’t TCU going from playing in the national championship game, to a Big 12 afterthought a year later. Or Florida State winning 19 straight, then losing 10 of 11.
This is more about Saban adding Jahmyr Gibbs and Jameson Williams. Or Harbaugh adding fourth- and fifth-year starting offensive linemen. Or Day adding the best defensive player (Caleb Downs) and running back (Quinshon Judkins) in the game.
It’s admitting you’ve made a mistake in high school evaluation (and/or development), and finding a temporary answer. It’s a handful of players who can be the difference between returning to the CFP ― or getting blown out at home to a decent Louisville team.
“There’s a whole lot of soul searching to be done when you have as horrible a performance as we had,” Swinney said after the Louisville disaster.
Now here we are at another inflection point. Watch how it plays out Saturday, when the Clemson offensive line deals with the Pitt pass rush and the Clemson receivers have to win on the outside in man coverage.
The Clemson staff knows Panthers coach Pat Narduzzi’s affinity for pressuring quarterbacks and forcing decisions. They’ll put the game in the hands of Clemson QB Cade Klubnik, who has completed only 54 percent of his passes and been sacked six times in the last two weeks against the aggressive defenses of Louisville and Virginia Tech.
The offensive line must protect. The receivers must win. The quarterback must make quick, correct decisions.
All the things that have been problematic since 2021. The same things that could prevent Clemson from reaching the CFP for the fourth consecutive season.
The same things that Swinney was apologizing for only two weeks ago, after Clemson fans filed out of Death Valley early to beat the traffic.
“We feel like we let a lot of people down, but that’s college football,” Swinney said. “There’s no hope for a better yesterday.”
But there’s a plan for a better tomorrow. Maybe it’s time to embrace it.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.