ESPN Analyst: Tigers ‘Flying Under the Radar in a Really Good Way’

An ESPN college football analyst broke down nine teams that haven’t been talked about enough this offseason, including Clemson.

Clemson is coming off a 9-4 (4-4 ACC) season in 2023, and the Tigers have missed the College Football Playoff each of the last three seasons following a run of six straight playoff appearances from 2015-20, during which they played for four national championships and won a pair of national titles.

So, is this the year Dabo Swinney’s team returns to dominant form?

ESPN’s Greg McElroy weighed in on that and gave his thoughts on Clemson, which carries momentum into 2024 after finishing last season on a five-game winning streak.

“Clemson last year – really, really shaky in the first two months of the season, right. It wasn’t pretty. They were a .500 football team through the first six, seven or eight games. It was not good,” McElroy said during an episode of his Always College Football show.

“But down the stretch, starting with the win against Notre Dame, they started to look a little bit more like the Clemson that we grew up with. And for those of you that are in your 30s like me, maybe the Clemson of the late 2010s, maybe we didn’t grow up with them, but that’s the Clemson that I envision when I still think Clemson and Dabo Swinney.”

McElroy added that he thinks “Clemson is a team that is flying under the radar in a really good way for Dabo Swinney and the Tigers.”

“A lot of talk this offseason about Miami, tons of talk about Florida State, rightfully so – you can make a case that those two rosters are the best in the ACC – but don’t sleep on Clemson, because that defense is built like a championship unit at all three levels,” McElroy said.

“And then offensively, if they can get more consistency out of Cade Klubnik, if they can get more consistency out of the run game behind Phil Mafah, their new starting running back — he was situational last year, played a lot. But I think him now becoming the bell cow is going to be even more effective for this Clemson team becoming more physical and more downhill in the run game.”

You can watch McElroy talk more about the Tigers on both sides of the ball in the following video, beginning at the 13-minute mark:

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