Clemson is one of the most fascinating teams in the country this year.

And not because the Tigers are coming off some monster season.

It is actually the opposite.

Clemson went 7-6 last year, finished 4-4 in the ACC, and had its worst record since 2010. That is not normal Clemson football. That is not normal Dabo Swinney football. From 2011 through 2022, Clemson lost only nine ACC games total. Over the last three years, the Tigers have lost nine ACC games.

That is the story here.

For almost a decade, Clemson felt inevitable. The Tigers were the standard in the ACC. They had the quarterback. They had the defensive line. They had the NFL receivers. They had the coaching staff. They had the swagger.

Now?

Now Clemson feels like a mystery.

And honestly, that makes them a lot more interesting.

HEAD COACH:

• Dabo Swinney, entering year 18 at Clemson
• Swinney is 187-53 as Clemson’s head coach.
• Clemson went 7-6 last season and 4-4 in the ACC.
• It was Clemson’s worst record since 2010.
• Clemson lost the Pinstripe Bowl to Penn State.

I don’t care what anybody says — Dabo Swinney still deserves respect.

You do not accidentally win two national championships. You do not accidentally build Clemson into a national powerhouse. You do not accidentally go 187-53 at a place that was not this before you got there.

But that does not mean the questions are unfair.

They are very fair.

Clemson has not looked like Clemson lately. The program has slipped from “national title contender” to “maybe this team can get back to the ACC Championship Game.” That is a huge drop for a program that used to own this league.

And this offseason, Dabo finally did something that people had been begging him to do for years.

He used the transfer portal.

He also made a major staff change, bringing Chad Morris back as offensive coordinator. Clemson officially announced Morris as the new OC in January.

That is a very Dabo move.

Instead of chasing the hot new name, he went back to someone he knows. Morris was part of the first Clemson offensive boom under Dabo. Now he is being asked to help fix a Clemson offense that has become way too ordinary.

It feels like Dabo is trying to go back in order to move forward.

We’ll see if it works.

QUARTERBACK:

This is where the season starts.

Cade Klubnik is gone, and Clemson has to figure out what comes next.

The main name is Christopher Vizzina. He played some last season, completing 45 of 71 passes for 406 yards, four touchdowns and one interception. He also ran 25 times for 41 yards.

Those numbers are fine.

But they also do not tell us everything.

Vizzina has talent. He was a big recruit. He has been in the program. He knows the offense. And coming out of spring, Chad Morris said Vizzina was the guy.

So if you are asking who I expect to take the first snap, I would say Christopher Vizzina. It’s hard to image Reynolds being the guy to lead Clemson into the other Death Valley (LSU) to face Lane Kiffin and a raucous crowd in Baton Rouge on Sept. 5.

But that does not mean this is settled forever.

Tait Reynolds is also in the room, and the interesting part there is that he is a talented freshman who barely got to play as a senior in high school. So Clemson has a young quarterback with upside, but also a quarterback who needs reps badly.

That makes this hard.

“Absolutely, absolutely,” Dabo Swinney said in the spring when asked if Reynolds could push Vizzina for the starting QB position. “Ain’t nobody got lifetime contracts around here. Everybody has to prove it. Everybody has to show up. Everybody has to earn it.”

If Vizzina is ready, Clemson can be dangerous. Not necessarily national-title dangerous, but “back in the ACC race” dangerous.

If he is not ready, this season could get sideways fast.

Because Clemson does not have the old Clemson margin for error right now. This is not the version of the Tigers where the defense gives up 13 points every week and the offense just has to be decent. This team needs the quarterback to be good.

Not okay.

Good.

That is the biggest difference between Clemson being back in the mix and Clemson being a 7- or 8-win team again.

THE REST OF THE OFFENSE

This is where I actually like Clemson more than I thought I would.

The Tigers have some real pieces.

The receiver room starts with T.J. Moore and Bryant Wesco Jr.. Moore and Wesco combined for 83 catches last season, and both give the QB room something to work with right away.

That matters.

A new quarterback’s best friend is a receiver who can win.

Clemson has two of them.

Olsen Patt-Henry is back at tight end, and the offensive line brings back Colin Sadler and Harris Sewell. That is not a perfect offense, but it is not empty either.

The bigger issue is identity.

Last year, Clemson scored 27.2 points per game. That is not terrible, but for Clemson, it is not good enough. The Tigers also averaged 3.95 yards per carry, which is not the kind of run game that scares anybody.

That is why Chad Morris matters so much.

Clemson needs juice again.

The Tigers need tempo. They need explosives. They need a run game that does not feel like it is being dragged uphill. They need to stop looking like a team that is trying really hard to be Clemson instead of just being Clemson.

The transfer to watch is Chris Johnson Jr., the former SMU running back.

Johnson ran for 479 yards and four touchdowns at SMU last season while averaging more than seven yards per carry. He also caught 17 passes for 180 yards and a touchdown. And Clemson fans already saw him up close — he had 59 rushing yards, a touchdown and 40 receiving yards against Clemson last season.

That is a fun addition.

Johnson brings speed. Clemson has needed more of that.

He may not be a 25-carry-a-game back, but he gives the offense something it badly needs: a player who can turn a small crease into a big play.

So offensively, the question is simple:

Can Chad Morris make Clemson explosive again?

Because the names are not bad. Vizzina, Moore, Wesco, Patt-Henry, Johnson, Sadler, Sewell — there is enough there to be good.

But Clemson needs more than “good on paper.”

The Tigers need production.

DEFENSE

This is the part that feels the least Clemson-like.

When you think about Clemson at its best, you think about defensive linemen who look like they were created in a lab. You think about pressure. You think about linebackers flying around. You think about offenses getting uncomfortable.

Last year, Clemson was not bad defensively.

But it also was not the old Clemson defense.

The Tigers allowed 20.5 points per game, which sounds good, but opponents still threw for 3,266 yards against them. Teams also attempted 484 passes against Clemson compared to 387 rushing attempts, which tells you opponents were not afraid to put the ball in the air.

That is the part that stands out.

Teams were willing to throw on Clemson.

That sentence used to sound weird.

The returning names matter. Sammy Brown is back at linebacker. Will Heldt is back, and he was a third-team All-ACC player. Ashton Hampton gives them experience in the secondary.

But Clemson also lost a lot.

That is why the transfer portal was so important.

Dabo brought in real defensive help, including Jerome Carter III from Old Dominion and Corey Myrick from Southern Miss. Carter had 75 tackles and a school-record six interceptions at Old Dominion last season, while Myrick came to Clemson after a 2025 season at Southern Miss with 92 tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss, two interceptions and a forced fumble.

That is not window dressing.

That is Clemson admitting it needed help and actually going to get it.

And honestly, that might be the most interesting thing about this team.

For years, people criticized Dabo for not using the portal enough. Now Clemson is coming off a disappointing season, and suddenly the Tigers are bringing in players who could actually start right away.

That tells you Dabo knows this cannot just be “business as usual.”

The defense does not have to become 2018 Clemson overnight.

But it does need to feel dangerous again.

SCHEDULE

The schedule is not easy.

Clemson opens at LSU.

That is a statement game immediately. There is no easing into this season. There is no soft opening. You start in Baton Rouge against an SEC opponent, and we will learn a lot about Clemson right away.

After that, the Tigers get Georgia Southern and North Carolina at home before making the long trip to Cal on a Friday night. Then comes one of the biggest games on the schedule: Miami at Clemson on Oct. 3.

That first month is fascinating.

At LSU.

Home for North Carolina.

At California.

Home for Miami.

That is not boring.

The good news is Clemson plays five of its first seven games at home. After the open date, the Tigers get Charleston Southern and Virginia Tech in Death Valley before the schedule turns again.

The final stretch is where it gets tricky.

Clemson plays at Florida State, at Syracuse, home against Georgia Tech, at Duke, and then home against South Carolina.

That is not a brutal schedule from start to finish, but the big games are very real.

And the SEC games are fascinating.

Clemson has gone 4-8 in its last 12 games against the SEC, and this year the Tigers get LSU and South Carolina. Those games matter for the record, obviously, but they also matter for perception.

If Clemson beats LSU to start the season, the whole narrative changes.

If Clemson loses that game and then drops one to North Carolina, Cal or Miami, suddenly people are asking the same old questions again before October even really gets rolling.

That is the pressure of being Clemson.

When you have been great, people do not give you much time to prove you are still good.

OUTLOOK

I keep going back and forth on Clemson.

Part of me says this is the year the Tigers bounce back. The roster still has talent. Dabo Swinney is still Dabo Swinney. Chad Morris should bring some energy back to the offense. Christopher Vizzina has upside. T.J. Moore and Bryant Wesco are real weapons. Chris Johnson Jr. gives the offense speed. The portal additions on defense should help right away.

That is the optimistic version.

The other version is this:

Clemson is replacing its quarterback. The offense was not good enough last season. The run game was not scary. The defense is not the old Clemson defense. The schedule opens at LSU and includes Miami, Florida State, Duke and South Carolina. And the program has not looked like the dominant version of itself for a few years now.

That is the concern.

I do think Clemson will be better.

But I do not know if I am ready to say Clemson is back.

That word gets thrown around too easily. “Back” for Clemson does not mean going 8-4. It does not even mean being decent. For Clemson, back means winning the ACC, making the Playoff and looking like a team nobody wants to play.

I’m not sure we are there yet.

The best-case scenario is that Vizzina wins the job and looks ready, Morris fixes the offensive rhythm, Moore and Wesco become one of the best receiver duos in the league, and the defense gets immediate help from the transfers. If that happens, Clemson can absolutely be in the ACC Championship conversation.

The worst-case scenario is that the quarterback spot is shaky, the offense still feels stuck, the defense is just okay, and the schedule exposes the Tigers early.

My gut?

Clemson is too talented to be bad.

But the Tigers are no longer too talented to question.

That is the difference.

For years, Clemson entered the season as the ACC team everyone else was chasing.

This year, Clemson enters the season trying to prove it still belongs in that conversation.

And for Dabo Swinney, that makes this one of the most important seasons he has had in a long time.

Full disclosure: I use AI tools to format my research into an article encompassing all of the information.