David HaleOct 3, 2025, 07:30 AM ETCloseCollege football reporter.Joined ESPN in 2012.Graduate of the University of Delaware.Follow on X
Finebaum: I don’t like Dabo Swinney’s future at Clemson (0:34)Paul Finebaum says he would rather Dabo Swinney coach at another university or go into television instead of continuing to coach Clemson. (0:34)
CLEMSON, S.C. — Dabo Swinney has a knack for finding a silver lining. It has been his defining trait over the past five seasons, as Clemson has hovered near the top of the ACC, but frustratingly far from the run of dominance it enjoyed in the 2010s. In a loss, Swinney found lessons. Even after a blowout, he saw hope. Even in the midst of fan revolt, he found all the evidence he needed of an inevitable turnaround within his own locker room.
“It’s just an absolute coaching failure,” Swinney said. “I don’t know another way to say it. And I’m not pointing the finger, I’m pointing the thumb. It starts with me, because I hired everybody, and I empower everybody and equip everybody.”
Record aside, Clemson has been here before — after slow starts in 2021, 2022, 2023 and last year’s blowout at the hands of Georgia to open the season. And yet, at each of those turns, Swinney remained his program’s biggest salesman.
Now, after the Tigers’ worst start since 2004, not even Swinney is immune to the reality. The questions are bigger, the stakes are higher and the solutions are more ephemeral.
In the aftermath of an emphatic loss to Syracuse in Death Valley two weeks ago, ESPN social posted the historic upset in bold type. The response from former Clemson defensive end Xavier Thomas echoed the frustration so many inside the Tigers’ once impenetrable inner sanctum are feeling.
Two months remain of a seemingly lost season. There is a path for Clemson to rebound, as it has before, and finish with a respectable, albeit disappointing record. But there is another road, too — one hardly imagined by anyone inside the program just weeks ago. A road that leads to the end of a dynasty.
“He’s definitely bought himself some time to be able to have some hiccups along the way,” former Clemson receiver Hunter Renfrow said. “He’s an unbelievable coach and leader, and he’ll get it figured out.”
FORMER CLEMSON RUNNING back and now podcaster Darien Rencher banked a cache of interviews with star players during fall camp he planned to release as the season progressed. Most have been evergreen. At the time he talked with Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik, that one did, too. Looking back, it feels more like a time capsule, one that can’t be unearthed without a full autopsy of what has unfolded since.
Klubnik’s career followed a pretty straight trend — a rocky rookie season primarily as the backup to a sophomore campaign filled with growing pains to a coming-out party last season that ended with 336 passing yards and three touchdowns in a playoff loss to Texas. The obvious next step was into the echelon of elite QBs — not just nationally, but within the pantheon of Clemson’s best, alongside Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence.
“It can’t be physical unless he’s got the yips, which maybe he does,” former Clemson offensive lineman and current ACC Network analyst Eric Mac Lain said. “It’s bad sometimes. You’ve got guys screaming wide-open, and he’s looking at them, and the ball’s just not coming out. That’s the unexplainable thing.”
Through four games, Klubnik has nearly as many passing touchdowns (six) as he does interceptions (four).
There are, however, more than a few folks around the program who believe they can explain the struggles — for Klubnik and other stars who underwhelmed in September.
“We don’t got no dogs at Clemson,” former All-America defensive end Shaq Lawson posted in early September. “NIL has changed everything.”
“It’s routine stuff. Basic, not complicated, like just simple reads, simple progression,” Swinney said of Klubnik’s play in Week 1, a performance that has been mirrored in subsequent games. “Holding the ball and running out of the pocket. Just didn’t play well, and so I didn’t have to talk to him. He already knew. He knows the game.”
This is a different era of college football, and while Swinney often sought a measure of patience with his players before, Klubnik is, by most reports, the second-highest paid person inside the football building after Swinney, so the expectations have changed.
“If [Klubnik] ain’t a dude, we ain’t winning,” Swinney said after the loss to LSU in Week 1. “Dudes got to be dudes. This is big boy football.”
That massive NIL paydays and equally immense hype might underpin Klubnik’s struggles is not without anecdotal evidence. Look around the country and there are plenty of others — Florida’s DJ Lagway, Texas’ Arch Manning, UCLA’s Nico Iamaleava, South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers and LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier — who’ve endured rough starts to seasons that were supposed to be star turns.
And yet, for Klubnik, this feels like a hollow excuse. He is, according to numerous coaches and teammates, unflinchingly competitive and talented. If anything, the knock on Klubnik the past few years has been his eagerness to play the role of hero, to do too much.
Perhaps the bigger impact of NIL on Klubnik’s performance comes in how far he has been from earning the paycheck. The millions could be an excuse to relax or a burden to live up to, and Klubnik’s tape through four games shows a QB scrambling to look the part rather than simply playing the game as he always has.
SWINNEY HAS OFTEN bristled at outright criticism of his own performance, like his tirade in response to one apoplectic Clemson fan — Tyler from Spartanburg — who called into Swinney’s radio show after a 4-4 start to the 2023 season demanding change. Swinney’s rant was largely credited as inspiring a five-game winning streak to end the year, an emphatic rebuke to those ready to write his epitaph.
“He’s done it his way,” Renfrow said of Swinney. “And he’s built a really good roster. Three months ago, everyone was crowning us as the best team to play this year.”
“Everybody can start throwing mud now,” Swinney said even before this latest round of mudslinging began in earnest. “Bring it on, say we suck again. Tell everybody we suck. Coaches suck, Cade stinks. Start writing that again.”
“One of the lazy takes on Swinney is he hasn’t changed,” Rencher said. “He did what he needed to do to give them a chance. He went and got the best offensive coordinator [Garrett Riley] in the country to come to Clemson. He got one of the most renowned defensive coordinators [Tom Allen] in the country who was just in the playoffs to come to Clemson. He went in the portal and got a stud D-end [in Will Heldt]. He paid his guys, retained his roster. These guys got paid.”
Even amid the hefty criticism coming from former players, little has been directed at Swinney. They played for him, they know him, and they’re convinced he’s not the source of Clemson’s struggles.
The new coordinators — Riley hired in 2023, and Allen, hired this offseason — and current players, however, are a different story.
“They want to win more than we do,” former edge rusher KJ Henry posted amid Clemson’s stunning loss against Syracuse.
The outpouring of frustration from former players — many, such as Henry, who endured a share of setbacks during Clemson’s more rocky stretch in the 2020s — has been notable.
“They’ve earned the right,” Heldt said. “They put in the time and have earned the right to say how they feel, but I don’t put too much thought into that.”
Riley’s playcalling has been questioned relentlessly. In the second half against LSU, with Clemson either ahead or within a score, the Tigers virtually abandoned the run game entirely.
Allen was brought in to toughen up a defense that was scorched last season by Louisville, SMU, Texas and, in the most embarrassing performance of the season, by Sellers and rival South Carolina. And yet, with NFL talent such as Heldt, Peter Woods and T.J. Parker on the defensive line, Syracuse owned the line of scrimmage in its Week 4 win in Death Valley.
Meanwhile promising recruits such as T.J. Moore and Gideon Davidson have yet to look ready for the big time, and the transfer additions beyond Heldt — Tristan Smith and Jeremiah Alexander — have offered virtually nothing.
“Dropped balls, Cade misses a guy, the offensive line gets beat, Cade has PTSD and rolls out when he shouldn’t — it’s just all these things,” Rencher said. “You can blame a lot of things but it’s just too much wrong to where it can’t be right. It’s too many things everywhere so it can’t come together. You can overcome some things, but they’re just all not on the same page.”
BEFORE HIS GAME against Clemson, which Georgia Tech ultimately won on a last-second field goal, Yellow Jackets coach Brent Key set the stage for what he knew would be a battle, despite the Tigers’ rocky start.
Swinney has resurrected his teams again and again, swatted away the critics, stayed true to his core philosophies and emerged victorious — if not a national champion.
“I see an extremely talented team,” Syracuse defensive coordinator Elijah Robinson said. “Those guys are dangerous. I don’t care what their record is. That’s not just a team, that’s a program. Dabo Swinney does a great job, and they went out and lost the first game last year and went on to win the conference. A lot of these kids, when I was at Texas A&M, we tried to recruit them. People can think what they want when they look at the record. I’m not looking at the record at all.”
Added another assistant coach who faced Clemson this season: “It wouldn’t surprise me if they run the table the rest of the way.”
Winning out would still get Clemson to 10 wins, a mark that has been the standard under Swinney. Winning out would likely shift all the criticism of September into another offseason of promise, such as the one Clemson just enjoyed. Winning out is still possible, according to the players there who’ve said a deep breath during an off week has been a chance to reset and start anew.