CHARLOTTE - Dabo Swinney didn’t try to dress it up. Clemson’s 2025 season, by his own description, was a mess.
At ACC Kickoff on July 16, the Tigers’ head coach owned the disappointment from a year that started with a preseason No. 4 ranking in the AP Top 25 Poll and ended at 7-5 in the regular season. Clemson finished with the fewest wins of Swinney’s tenure since 2010, his second full season in charge.
“We stunk last year. That's true, too,” he said. “We've lost some games that, man, we should have won.”
Still, Swinney is looking at the past and seeing a familiar kind of bounce-back path. He pointed back to 2010, when Clemson dropped five games by six points or fewer and finished 6-7. That season included a loss in overtime at Auburn to the national champion Tigers and another on a 100-yard field goal by Dustin Hopkins in Tallahassee.
“In 2010, you know, we lost five games by six points or less: one in overtime at Auburn to the national champion, Auburn, one on a 100-yard field goal by Dustin Hopkins in Tallahassee,” Swinney said. “Not that I'm still bitter about that. You know, it was brutal, and we go 6-7.”
Last season had its own painful finishes. Clemson lost at Georgia Tech on a game-winning field goal while the special teams unit was running onto the field. The Tigers also fell at home to Duke on a game-winning two-point conversion with 40 seconds left.
Swinney said a few plays could have changed the feel of the whole year, including a fourth-down chance in the red zone in Week 1 with less than a minute to go. But he also made clear the record stands on its own.
“We lost three games by 11 points,” he said. “We lost two games on the last play of the game.
We are 151-7 all the way back to 2010 when we lead in the fourth quarter. Two of those seven were last year.”
That kind of one-score trouble is not what Clemson has been known for under Swinney, and he acknowledged that the Tigers of his best years were built on finishing better. He tied that to the program’s two national titles in 2016 and 2018, saying those teams were also closer to the edge than their records suggested.
“I've had some 12-0 teams that were four plays from being 8-4, all right? We didn't win the close games,” he said.
“We didn't finish in the fourth quarter. We didn't run the ball effectively.
We played the worst pass defense in my coaching career.”
“So that's my fault, but it's football stuff. It's football stuff. That's our focus.”
Swinney also drew a line back to 2010 and the response that followed. Even with the record, he still saw buy-in, and six players were selected in the 2011 NFL draft. This year, nine Tigers were drafted.
He remembered the pressure around the program changing in 2011, when he believed another bad season might have cost him the job. Instead, Clemson responded the next fall.
“Hey, we came back the next year. We won the ACC, won 10 games,” Swinney said. “If you go back and look at the predictions probably going into 2011, I will be willing to bet we weren't picked to win the ACC.”
For the players with him in Charlotte - linebacker Sammy Brown, edge rusher Will Heldt and tight end Olsen Patt-Henry - the message was also about perspective. Swinney said Patt-Henry has never gone through a season like that, while Brown has already seen both a championship run and a rough year. Heldt, meanwhile, came in after winning more games last season than he had during his entire time at Purdue.
“Olsen has never had a season like that,” Swinney added. “Sammy has been there two years.
He won a championship, went to the playoffs, and then we stunk. He's got two seasons to draw experience upon.
Will, heck, he won more games last year than he won at his whole time at Purdue, I think.”
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