Predicting the 2025 Playoff: No. 5 Clemson

Published: May 18, 2025 · 8:00 AM EDT

When the 2020s began, we didn’t have any reason to believe that Clemson would be part of a dubious distinction.

After all, Clemson earned its 6th consecutive College Football Playoff berth in 2020. That stretch included a 6-4 record in Playoff games with 2 national titles. Next to Alabama, nobody owned the sport like Dabo Swinney. As long as he was at Clemson, why couldn’t the Tigers keep competing for national titles?

Well, much has changed. With the first half of the decade in the books, Clemson has yet to win a Playoff or New Year’s 6 Bowl in the 2020s. In fact, that’s true of the entire ACC. The most significant bowl game victory was … the Cheez-It Bowl? Weird. Clemson had at least 3 losses in each of the last 4 seasons, which coincided with the start of the NIL era.

But now, perhaps, the pendulum could swing back. Clemson ranks No. 1 in America in percentage of returning production, Cade Klubnik enters 2025 with more promise than any Clemson quarterback since 2020 Trevor Lawrence and Swinney poached Tom Allen as his new defensive coordinator after that unit was a doormat in a first-round Playoff exit at Texas in 2024.

So is Clemson ready to return to national title contender status? At the very least, a 12-team Playoff berth feels imminent.

A few things are worth noting before we break down individual Playoff paths. One is that while we’re still in the 12-team era, I’m anticipating a change in 2025. I believe that we’ll get rid of the stipulation that the 4 byes/top-4 seeds will go to the 4 highest-ranked conference champs. One year in, I predict that all parties will get on board with changing that. These rankings, which I’ll roll out over the next 2 weeks, will reflect that anticipated change.

In other words, I won’t try to confuse you with seeding. This will just be based on where they’ll show up in the final Playoff poll. Just in case you forgot what Playoff field entails, here’s a refresher:

5 highest-ranked conference champs
7 at-large teams
Seeds 1-4 get a first-round bye
Seeds 5-8 get a home Playoff game in the first round
Seeds 9-12 get a road Playoff game in the first round

Does that all sound good? Good.

Here’s the projected 12-team field so far:

Let’s continue with 5-seed Clemson:

Why the Playoff path exists

How do I say this without sounding dismissive of the ACC? I could say that the Tigers clearly have the best odds to win their conference (+140) among power conference squads. Or I could simply point out that nobody on Clemson’s schedule finished as a top-10 team in the AP Poll. Both of those things are true, but it might come down to something even more simple than that.

Clemson wasn’t exactly a juggernaut last year, and it still won the ACC. It did that with major defensive issues and a backfield that couldn’t handle injuries. A flawed team still emerged from the ACC because it was, by all accounts, a flawed league. It didn’t even matter that Clemson suffered 3 regular-season losses, 2 of which were at home. It still found a Playoff path.

The Playoff path should be much more open in 2025. The hiring of the aforementioned Allen should help a defense that returns preseason All-Americans TJ Parker and Peter Woods on the defensive line. That feels much more like the way Brent Venables built those dominant Clemson defenses of the 2010s. It also feels like Clemson’s receiver room is getting back to its 2010s identity, which felt like it always had multiple NFL guys. On top of that, Klubnik got better in Year 2 in Garrett Riley’s offense. That culminated with arguably the most impressive game of his career in that loss to Texas.

Once upon a time, we’d spend a bunch of time discussing how a headliner opener like what Clemson has vs. LSU can determine a Playoff path. But after the Tigers got trounced by Georgia in last year’s season opener and it still made the field, that’s probably not as significant as some might assume. Shoot, it might not even be incredibly significant that Clemson will be tasked with tackling LaNorris Sellers in Columbia, which was something it failed to do in last year’s regular-season finale in Death Valley.

This comes down to whether Clemson can be the standard in the ACC. The Tigers are too experienced to forecast that kind of collapse.

But if there was a collapse in store …

The potential roadblock

As much credit as Swinney deserves for building this experienced roster and this coaching staff, one big question remains — are we sure that Clemson will be able to run the ball?

Swinney made the wise move of hiring Matt Luke as his offensive line coach after the 2023 season, though that didn’t lead to a revamped unit in 2024. Instead, the Tigers were held to an average of 100.8 rushing yards and 3.3 yards per carry in 6 games vs. FBS teams that finished with a winning record. Those numbers dropped to 81.3 rushing yards/game and 2.9 yards/carry in 4 games vs. teams that finished ranked in the AP Poll.

Clemson’s only chance at having a productive ground game involved Phil Mafah staying healthy. He’s gone now. Backup Jay Haynes is working his way back from a December torn ACL, and nobody else in that backfield got more than 30 carries last season. The good news is that Clemson brings back 4 starters on the offensive line. Couple that with Year 2 working with Luke, and it’s not bold to predict that the group should be better.

Still, though. SMU, South Carolina and Boston College were all extremely solid run defenses last year, and 2 of those games are on the road. Clemson will also travel to face a Louisville team that dominated the Tigers in Death Valley last season. Perhaps Klubnik showed in 2024 that he could take on the load of a 1-dimensional offense at times, but Clemson will be desperate to find a reliable back who can both tote the rock 15-20 times and keep the preseason Heisman Trophy favorite upright in pass protection.

Clemson’s ground game could be the Achilles’ heel in a 9-3 regular season that includes 2 losses in ACC play (vs. SMU, vs. Duke and at Louisville are the 3 candidates) and a bookend loss to either LSU or South Carolina. Of course, that would still have to mean that Clemson’s 2 losses in ACC play are enough to prevent it from playing in a conference title game, wherein an automatic bid would likely be up for grabs.

Even that seems far-fetched.

Odds that they win a Playoff game

I’m going with 85.8%.

As Clemson saw in that 12-5 matchup last year, even if the road team gets a brilliant performance from its starting quarterback, that’s still a tall task to beat a top-5 team. In fact, Boise State, AKA the team that Clemson would host, has never won a true road game vs. an AP Top-5 team. The Broncos have only played 1 such game in program history, and it happened in their first year as an FBS program back in 1996. Make of that what you will.

What I make of it is that going into a venue like that in an all-or-nothing game is much different than stunning a power conference foe in a Fiesta Bowl without national championship implications. It also helps that Allen did an excellent job containing Ashton Jeanty last year as Penn State’s defensive coordinator in the Fiesta Bowl. With another loaded defensive line to work with, I wouldn’t view that as a concern for the home Tigers.

Clemson will finally give the ACC its first Playoff victory of the 2020s.

Predicting the Playoff will continue on Monday with No. 4 … a Big Ten team that’s knocking on the door of greatness.

Connor O'Gara

Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.