Dabo Swinney’s Clemson Tigers won’t change their stripes. We’ll soon find out if Dabo’s right
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CHARLOTTE, NC — Clemson star running back Phil Mafah’s smile glistens like the sun off Lake Hartwell when you ask him whether the Tigers are flying under the national radar entering the 2024 season.
“What’s the expression? Buy stock now,” Mafah says and laughs, a nod to his coach Dabo Swinney’s proclamation a season ago that if you doubted Clemson after a 4-4 start to the 2023 campaign, you still had time to “buy big.”
It’s late July, the height of “talking season” and the season of perpetual hope, even at a place like Clemson, where Swinney’s program appears farther from the national elite after a 9-4 campaign than at any point in the past decade.
Mafah has data points and facts, though, not just blind confidence.
“We won the last 5 games, including the bowl game. We are in Year 2 under one of the best offensive minds in the sport. We have a third-year player with a lot of experience at quarterback. We have over 2,000 yards of production back at running back. We return 14 starters, including most of our offensive line. I can’t wait to get out there and play, I know that,” Mafah told SDS on Thursday.
Mafah’s data points and facts fly in the face of the prevailing national counternarrative that thanks to a stubborn head coach who hasn’t adjusted to the realities of the transfer portal and the modern college game, Clemson has slipped out of the national imagination. The Tigers have the 12th-best odds to win the national championship, according to DraftKings.
Unsurprisingly, Swinney, who is entering his 16th full season as the Tigers’ head coach, doesn’t see it that way.
“I am not anti-transfer portal,” Swinney said from the podium. “I am pro young man, pro talented young men, and I believe in our team and they believe in me and we believe in Clemson. If you look at guys who have left Clemson, the great majority of them, they just wanted to go play. And if you look at the poral, the majority of guys in it are guys that just want to play. So we’ve had top-15 recruiting classes 14 times in my time at Clemson. We are very consistent. We bring in great players and as a result, it’s tough to play at Clemson. We did it again this year, signing one of the best classes in the country and that will probably prove out. It shows up 4 years later, when it really counts, but we love what we have on this team, right?”
The problem with Swinney’s retort is that it is a half-truth.
Does Clemson recruit beautifully? Of course. Do they evaluate talent as well as anyone in the country? Yes. Under Swinney, they have 2 national championships and have won 7 of the past 9 ACC championships, winning the titles that bear out Swinney’s talent as an evaluator.
But at Georgia, Alabama, Michigan, and Ohio State — the premier programs in the country — you recruit, evaluate, and use the portal. There’s no reason these things are mutually exclusive.
The reality is no matter how much Swinney loves his team, other programs are increasingly using the transfer portal to replace key contributors and shore up roster weaknesses.
Ohio State needs a transcendental quarterback? Enter Justin Fields from Georgia.
Georgia needs a game-changer at running back? Welcome Trevor Etienne from Florida.
Michigan needs an anchor who can immediately make the offensive line championship caliber? Drake Nugent is on line three.
Alabama needs a playmaker on the perimeter to lock down a SEC championship in Saban’s final season? Jermaine Burton wanted that opportunity.
You don’t need to be Tyler from Spartanburg to realize just how little sense it makes for Swinney to continue to coach with one arm tied behind his back.
Then again, maybe Swinney is right. Perhaps last season’s 5-0 Clemson finish was a harbinger of success, proof that Swinney’s deep belief in culture and team unity can still deliver championships in the NIL and transfer portal era, which feels, fairly or not, more like professional free agency than college football.
The pieces are in place for Clemson to be extremely good, especially on defense, where the Tigers return 56% of their production and should get immense jumps from Freshman All-American defensive tackle Peter Woods and defensive end TJ Parker. The Tigers finished 30th nationally in scoring defense last year, allowing just 21.1 points per game. Only 2 opponents — FSU and Kentucky — reached 30 points.
“We should continue to play Clemson football defensively. We will be physical and fast and aggressive,” senior safety RJ Mickens told SDS. “We will produce takeaways and I think we’ll be as good as anyone in the country up front, which is huge.”
There is plenty of returning production around quarterback Cade Klubnik, too, including Mafah, who enters his final season in Death Valley with 1,772 yards rushing and 20 touchdowns over his career. With Will Shipley off to the NFL, Mafah should be the bell cow for an offense that has a chance to be Clemson’s most balanced since the Lawrence-Travis Etienne years.
That, though, depends on Klubnik, who improved as a sophomore but still threw 9 interceptions last season, making critical mistakes in all 4 of Clemson’s losses.
Mafah said the team believes that Klubnik’s second full season as a starter will be different.
“We just took a trip down to Sea Island, spent a great time together, worshipping, fellowship,” Mafah said. “(Klubnik) is my brother in Christ. I love that dude. He cares about this team so much. He’s taken a great step this offseason just to get closer to the guys, help to bring unity within the offense and defense. He won’t get outworked, I know that.”
Clemson fans won’t have to wait long to know if Mafah and Swinney’s confidence is wistful, talking season hope or the real deal.
The Tigers open with Georgia, the nation’s best program, in Atlanta.
With the expanded Playoff allowing for multiple losses, Swinney downplayed the importance of wining that game, but don’t tell his players that.
“We will find out who we are,” Mickens told SDS.
If Clemson wins, expectations will soar.
If they lose, Swinney is right to note that thanks to the 12-team playoff, very little is lost.
But tough games against NC State and at Florida State loom before Oct. 6, giving the Tigers one of the toughest opening stretches in the sport. The opening stretch is a chance for Clemson to make a statement and show the country that Swinney is right, and Clemson isn’t slipping. Buy now.
“It’s a chance to show everyone what our program is about, no question,” Mafah told SDS.
Of course, it’s also a chance to compile more evidence that Swinney is wrong, and that change must come to a group of Tigers reluctant to change their stripes.
We’ll soon find out.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
