Greg McElroy isn’t buying a big Clemson rebound, and he’s putting a long-running Dabo Swinney streak in real danger.
On Always College Football, McElroy said he expects the Tigers to finish below 10 wins again, which would give Clemson back-to-back sub-10 seasons for the first time since ’09 and 2010.
“I think Clemson finishes under 10 wins again,” McElroy said. “So that would be the first back-to-back sub-10s since ’09 and 2010.
So here’s how I get there - it’s not that Dabo Swinney didn’t dodge it - he said it perfectly. Clemson really underachieved last year.
That’s his phrase, that’s not mine. And here’s the detail that everybody quotes - Clemson tied a program record with nine draft picks off that 7-6 football team."
McElroy’s main concern starts with the schedule. He pointed directly to the opener at LSU and then the Oct. 3 matchup with Miami in Clemson.
“And you look at the schedule - they open at LSU, Week 1, Death Valley, Lane Kiffin’s debut in front of a crowd that’s waited six years for something really special to happen,” McElroy continued. “Then Miami comes to Clemson on Oct. 3, and Miami just played for a national championship. That’s two playoff-caliber teams inside your first six games, one on the road with a reshaped roster.”
He also acknowledged that Clemson has already shown it can bounce back, but said the warning signs still make it hard to trust the Tigers.
“Now the case for Clemson, and it’s not nothing, they did exactly this in 2024,” McElroy finished. “They went 9-4, then 10 wins and an ACC title.
And Swinney kind of broke his own tradition. He actually went to the portal for the first time.
A man publicly reversing a position that he has defended for years. So my verdict is if they don’t get to 10, and if I’m wrong, it’s because Dabo is still Dabo, and I underestimated a program that has built a career out of this exact bounce-back situation.”
The bigger issue, as McElroy sees it, is that Clemson’s problems looked more like a coaching issue than a talent issue. The players expected to carry the program last season still ended up in the NFL after a 7-6 year, and Swinney continues to recruit his type of player. But those players still have to deliver.
Clemson’s path to 10 wins is not impossible. In ACC play, the Tigers could be in line for something like a 7-1 run in the best-case scenario. Miami comes to Clemson, and the toughest road league game may be the late-November trip to Duke, though there’s no telling how strong the Blue Devils will be by then.
The two games that loom largest are the SEC matchups. Clemson opens at LSU, a year after losing the first leg of that home-and-home in Memorial Stadium.
The season also ends against South Carolina, which beat Clemson in its most recent trip to Death Valley two years ago. At minimum, Clemson probably needs to split those two games.
There’s also the math around how Clemson reached 10 wins two years ago. The Tigers were 9-3 before the ACC Championship Game, and the win over SMU in Charlotte pushed them over the top. So while regular-season 10 wins would obviously settle the discussion early, an ACC title, a playoff win, or even a bowl game would all factor into the final total.
Clemson has enough talent and a workable enough schedule to get there. But McElroy’s take is clear: if the Tigers fall short again, the streak that helped define the Swinney era could finally be in trouble.
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