CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 With two national titles to his name, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney is past the point of trying to validate his worth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, most people don\u2019t have one, and probably never will get one. So I don\u2019t really feel like I gotta go win another national title to prove anything to anybody,\u201d Swinney told The Athletic at ACC Kickoff on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanna focus on the things that really drive me, and that is impacting these guys\u2019 lives, truly fulfilling the purpose that we have in our program. Nobody wants to win more than me. And we\u2019ve won 11 (conference and national) championships in the last 15 years. I think the next closest coach has six. So, being who I am, that\u2019s served us well. So I don\u2019t know how to be anything other than me, but as far as, like, I gotta go win another national championship to prove something to somebody, I\u2019m not really wired that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swinney built a program at Clemson that went toe-to-toe with Nick Saban\u2019s Alabama dynasty for half of the 2010s. The past five years haven\u2019t been the same, and Clemson is coming off its worst season (7-6) under Swinney since 2010, his third year as head coach.<\/p>\n
The 2025 team was one of the country\u2019s biggest disappointments. Coming off a College Football Playoff appearance and with some highly touted returnees anchoring the defense, the Tigers seemed poised to return to national championship contention.<\/p>\n
Instead, Clemson finished tied for seventh in the ACC with a 4-4 record, including home losses to Syracuse, Duke and SMU.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we were terrible in pass defense, the worst I\u2019ve had,\u201d Swinney said of last year\u2019s team. \u201cAnd we didn\u2019t run the ball anywhere near like we need to, which affected us on third down, affected our scoring.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the NFL Draft rolled around in April, Clemson\u2019s missed opportunity seemed even more glaring. The Tigers had nine players drafted, including two in the first round. Quarterback Cade Klubnik went in the fourth round to the New York Jets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you want to dwell on that, but at the same time, you don\u2019t want to completely forget it because there are many aspects of not only the game of football, but the game of life that you can learn from a season like that last year,\u201d said linebacker Sammy Brown, sounding a bit like his coach. \u201cHow to overcome adversity, how to be a man and face adversity and be able to overcome it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, we really are focusing this offseason on resetting and, you know, resetting our goals, resetting our standards and learning from last year, but this is a new season, this is a new team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clemson will be breaking in a new starter at quarterback for the first time since 2023. While Swinney has become more active in the transfer portal, he\u2019s riding with in-house options this season. Chris Vizzina Jr., entering his fourth season in the program with 105 career pass attempts, is the presumptive starter, though freshman Tait Reynolds has already made his presence felt.<\/p>\n
Swinney also turned back the clock, rehiring Chad Morris as offensive coordinator after parting ways with Garrett Riley. Morris was at Clemson from 2011 to \u201914, helping Swinney launch one of the most successful runs in college football history.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody compares us to \u201915-19,\u201d Swinney said, referring to the stretch in which the Tigers went 69-5, made the four-team CFP four times and won national titles in 2016 and \u201918, beating Saban\u2019s Crimson Tide each time. \u201cThey say that but don\u2019t have perspective. That was the winningest five years in college football. It\u2019s been done once. So if that\u2019s always what you\u2019re gonna be compared to, you\u2019re gonna have a lot of failure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clemson is 57-22 since, with two more Playoff appearances but no CFP victories.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe arrow\u2019s kind of going the wrong way based on some recent stuff we\u2019ve done this past year, but it\u2019s our job to get it turned around and headed back toward the top,\u201d Swinney said.<\/p>\n
Like every coach in the sport, he looks around at the rapidly changing world of college sports and sees \u201cchaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a ship drifting out to sea,\u201d Swinney said. \u201cNobody\u2019s navigating it. It\u2019s waiting for somebody to point it somewhere. It\u2019s just kind of floating around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swinney said he\u2019s still motivated by charting a course through that uncertainty for the Tigers, even if he feels his personal legacy needs no validation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the challenge of trying to figure this out,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been affected at Clemson, but on a scale of 1-10, we\u2019re like a 3 based on what I\u2019ve seen at a lot of these places out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swinney has some ideas to fix the sport as a whole but said he\u2019s more focused on doing the job he\u2019s paid to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t save the world so I don\u2019t even worry about it. I just focus on Clemson,\u201d he said. \u201cListen, Clemson ain\u2019t ever been in a better spot. Culturally, programmatically, yeah we didn\u2019t have a good season last year, but our culture, we lead the nation in graduation, lead the nation in retention in an era where they can leave any time they want.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids love it there. They stay there. We don\u2019t have a lot of issues and we\u2019ve won.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swinney is also quick to point out that if championships are the ultimate measure of success, he\u2019s still doing better than most of his peers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many teams have won championships?\u201d he asked. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of coaches that get paid a lot of money. They get paid to win and they ain\u2019t ever won. The money I get paid is because we won. Ain\u2019t nobody give me nothing. We\u2019ve had to earn it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Swinney is not out to prove anything, he is not lacking motivation or enthusiasm for the job of making Clemson the best it can be: \u201cI love the place I\u2019m at. I love who I\u2019m with. I love the kids. I love the game. I\u2019m just getting going. Some people say, \u2018Is he gonna retire?\u2019 Retire? And do what? I\u2019m a football coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted that at 56, he is the same age Saban was when he was hired by Alabama.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe coached until he was 73,\u201d Swinney said. \u201cI ain\u2019t coaching until I\u2019m 73. But I got a lot more to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 With two national titles to his name, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney is past the point…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1771,1607,399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-767268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-clemson-tigers","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}