If it worked once, it can work again. That’s what Dabo Swinney is betting on heading into his 18th season leading Clemson, a program he’s led to two national titles but has finished six of the last seven seasons ranked lower than its preseason ranking.
After a 7-6 season in 2025 that began with a No. 4 preseason ranking — Clemson’s worst record in a decade and a half — Swinney is embracing déjà vu.
“Go back and read the headlines from the spring of ’11,” he reported in May. “I’d been a head coach two years, and not really popular in the first place, and now, you’re coming off six wins, and then you hire a high school coach named Chad Morris, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God! Thank God, we’ll be able to get rid of him after this year!'”
Well, that didn’t happen. Morris, who implemented a new wide-open offense, helped lead Clemson to a 10-win season and the program’s first ACC title in 20 years. It set in motion the program’s unprecedented run through the 2010s and early 2020s — 12 straight double-digit-win seasons, six straight ACC championships, two national titles and six top-four finishes in the AP poll.
Fifteen years later, Swinney is running the same play. He fired offensive coordinator Garrett Riley after last season. As he listened to questions about his relevance reach a volume he could no longer ignore, Swinney went back to the well rather than try something new. He brought Morris back to Clemson.
It worked once. Can it work again? That’s the question heading into ACC Media Days in Charlotte and, more importantly, the marquee opener at LSU against first-year coach Lane Kiffin.
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As much as Swinney compares the preseason 15 years ago to the one he lives now, the circumstances are different.
Clemson entered last fall as a popular pick to win the national title, ranking No. 4 in the preseason AP poll. Quarterback Cade Klubnik was a Heisman candidate. The Tigers were the media’s pick to repeat as ACC champions.
The Tigers then opened 1-3, never recovered their footing and limped to a 7-6 finish — the program’s worst record since Swinney went 6-7 in 2010, his second full season as head coach.
“You win seven games at Clemson, sure, you better have some freaking urgency,” Swinney reported. “There’s definitely a sense of urgency.”
The offense averaged 27.2 points per game, ranking 11th in the ACC. The passing defense allowed 251.2 yards per game — 120th nationally. He fired Riley and let go of longtime safeties coach Mickey Conn. Nine players got drafted anyway, and seven more signed as undrafted free agents.
“I look back at last year,” Swinney reported. “Listen, those kids were great. I mean, there was a committed group. I mean, they did what they needed to do. I didn’t get it done for them. And that’s the bottom line.”
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Swinney also did something he had spent his career resisting: he combed the transfer portal. He signed 11 players, a program record, surpassing the combined haul from 2019 through 2024 in a single offseason.
Still, the quantity didn’t match every position of need. Clemson pulled a trio of defensive backs, a position of need, but none of the transfers signed were quarterbacks or offensive linemen. As much as the numbers may lead you to believe Swinney had changed, he had not. He doubled down, opting to trust what was already there rather than import a solution from the portal. It’s the defining act of Swinney’s faith in his system, and also perhaps the most consequential gamble of his career.
“The portal didn’t get us beat,” Swinney reported. “We had nine guys get drafted. And we had seven go to the free agents. We’ve got to get better at football stuff. That’s our focus.”
Morris arrived at Clemson in 2011 with a tempo-based spread offense nobody in the ACC had seen from the Tigers, and spent the next four years turning Death Valley into one of the most explosive environments in college football. Clemson went 41-11, won four consecutive ACC championships, averaged 30-plus points per game every season and developed Tajh Boyd into an All-ACC quarterback and Deshaun Watson into a future No. 1 overall draft pick.
After Morris left for the SMU head coaching job, the program sustained — and then surpassed — everything he built. As much as Alabama dominated the decade, Clemson, too, became a dynasty with two national titles against the Tide, including the unbeaten season in 2018.
But then the NIL era, along with more player freedom in the transfer portal, changed the landscape. Swinney stuck to his guns, ignoring the portal while focusing on developing high school signees and improving roster retention. Clemson was still successful, sure, but new cracks formed in the foundation. The Tigers haven’t finished in the top 10 since 2020 despite winning three conference titles during that time.
In what has become an annual tradition, Swinney defends himself by leaning on the past — an argument weighted heavily in the distant past rather than recent history. He comes prepared every offseason, rattling off a laundry list of stats and superlatives: “We’re seventh in wins this decade,” Swinney reported in May. “… And people say, ‘Well, it’s all about championships.’ OK, well, how many people got more?”
Clemson leads the nation with seven conference titles since 2016, including three since 2020, tying Georgia, Alabama and Michigan. Still, Swinney has built a monster at Clemson. National titles became the expectation in the late 2010s, but the program’s two CFP games in the 2020s ended with double-digit losses.
“We wrote a bad chapter, but we’re still writing. We’re still writing,” Swinney repeated. “And the lesson in all of that is, it’s not about what people predict, it’s not about what people say, it’s about what you do.”
That has been Swinney’s answer to every criticism: wait and see. For 15 years, that confidence was backed up by results. Now he’s asking people to trust him again on the other side of a season that tested that faith.
He turns to redshirt junior Christopher Vizzina, who has started exactly one game in his college career, to lead at quarterback. True freshman Tait Reynolds arrived in January and immediately made noise in spring practices. Swinney reported after the March 28 spring game that Vizzina holds the lead, but Reynolds has clearly earned the No. 2 spot.
“Now we’re coming out with some clarity, and we’ve got two really good players that are going to go compete,” Swinney reported. “And either way, we’re going to get better.”
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The parallel to 2011 holds here, too. Morris inherited a quarterback situation not of his making. Boyd was the incumbent, and Morris’ uptempo system unlocked his full potential. Boyd is now Clemson’s quarterbacks coach. Whether he and Morris can unlock Vizzina — or whether Reynolds hijacks the job, as Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence did — is the central storyline of Clemson’s 2026 season.
Much like 2011, there are questions about Morris’ abilities, too. He hasn’t called plays at the college level since he was Auburn’s offensive coordinator in 2020, when the Tigers ranked 89th in scoring (25.1 points per game), and head coach Gus Malzahn was fired after the season. Since then, Morris went back to the high school ranks, bounced between USF and Clemson as an analyst, and spent a season at Texas State coaching receivers before sitting out the 2025 season to watch his son Chandler play quarterback at Virginia.
“They’ve got to trust us that they feel that they’re getting better underneath our leadership, and when that happens, then you check the hooks in them, and you know you’re going to get the best,” Morris reported this week at Clemson’s media day. “It’s a marathon followed by a series of boxing matches along the way. You just keep pushing forward every day and focus on yourself. Focus on the Clemson Tigers.”
The opener doesn’t offer a grace period. Clemson travels to Baton Rouge on Sept. 5 with College GameDay in town and Lane Kiffin’s debut at LSU as the backdrop. Clemson lost 34-31 against LSU a year ago in the home-and-home opener, a result that helped spark the 1-3 start.
Swinney has never claimed the path back will be easy.
“I don’t know if we’ll get all the way to the top of the mountain,” he reported at Clemson’s media day on July 14, “but we need to get it pointing back in that direction.”
That is, in some ways, the most honest thing Swinney has reported publicly in years.
The guys who suffered through six losses last season, he reported, are salty. The new ones are hungry. Morris knows the place, the DNA and what the offense is supposed to look like when it’s working. Athletic director Graham Neff has given Swinney his public endorsement.
Now it’s time to go back to the future.
“Sometimes you’ve got to go back to go forward,” Swinney reported in May.
In 2011, that was the right call. The Tigers turned to a high school coach with a different idea, and it changed everything.
Swinney is betting it can happen again.
