Greg McElroy isn’t ready to write off Clemson, but he’s not brushing aside what he saw against LSU, either. The ESPN analyst’s concern goes deeper than the loss itself. For him, the real issue is how Clemson got there - and whether the problems exposed on opening night can be fixed fast enough.
A big part of McElroy’s skepticism centers on Dabo Swinney’s long-standing preference for building the roster from within. In McElroy’s view, that approach can leave Clemson behind teams that lean heavily on the transfer portal before the season even starts.
“We know they have the money. We know they have the building.
We know they have the resources,” McElroy said on Always College Football. “What they don’t have is a head start every time they start the season.”
LSU, in McElroy’s telling, showed exactly what that head start can look like.
Clemson had to replace multiple players who left for the NFL, and while Swinney did use the portal more than he has in the past, the Tigers still depended on players already in the program to absorb bigger roles. LSU, meanwhile, brought in experienced transfers and moved faster.
“If you had taken [more] transfers in, they might already be on third base, whereas Clemson is trying to get them from first to third in an offseason,” McElroy said.
The offensive issues weren’t confined to one spot. Christopher Vizzina started at quarterback before freshman Tait Reynolds got a shot, but McElroy pointed to a unit that struggled across the board. The protection broke down, the receivers had trouble getting open, the run game didn’t offer much support, and the offense never looked like it could really stress LSU.
“He’s not the exclusive reason,” McElroy said of Vizzina.
Still, McElroy sees reason to watch Clemson closely from here. Swinney has already been more open to change than he was in earlier seasons, bringing in a career-high number of transfers and bringing Chad Morris back in an effort to breathe life into the offense. McElroy thought those moves would show up more clearly than they did.
“I do like Chad Morris still. I think he’s a good coach,” McElroy said. “Thinking this offense might change a bit, yet it didn’t change at all.”
Even so, Clemson has been here before. The Tigers were routed 34-3 by Georgia to open the 2024 season, took plenty of heat, and still bounced back enough to win the ACC Championship and make the College Football Playoff.
That’s why McElroy isn’t declaring the Tigers done after one rough night.
“We have seen this program climb out of bad news cycles before,” he said.
But this feels like more than just surviving criticism and waiting for things to smooth out. Clemson has already made some of the moves people had been asking for. Now the pressure is on to show those changes actually solve something.
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