What If Clemson Beats UGA in Week 1? ESPN's McElroy Chimes In

With the 2024 season right around the corner, ESPN college football analyst Greg McElroy weighed in on some “what if” scenarios in the sport this year.

One of those “what ifs” that McElroy gave his take on – what if Clemson beats Georgia in Week 1?

“Would that officially put to bed the notion that Dabo ‘can’t get it done in the current format of college football’? Tyler from Spartanburg won’t be calling the next week, I can promise you that,” McElroy said in an episode of his Always College Football show.

“Now, it would be massive for Clemson, in the court of public opinion. It would be enormous, because people are gonna – regardless of what happens with Georgia Week 1, whether they win or lose – people are gonna know that Georgia has one of the best rosters in the sport. So even if they lost that game, there’s still plenty of meat on the bone for them to get back into good graces. But it unveils some possible liabilities. That’s something that I would be really interested to see.”

Clemson (9-4, 4-4 ACC in 2023) checked in at No. 14 in the preseason Coaches Poll released this week, while Georgia (13-1, 8-1 SEC in 2023) opens the upcoming season at No. 1 in the Coaches Poll.

McElroy pointed out how rare a Georgia loss has become, with the Bulldogs having lost just two games in the last three seasons, and both of those losses having come in the SEC Championship Game. He noted that Georgia has won 39 consecutive regular season games dating to 2020, the second-longest on-field streak in the AP Poll era.

As for the Bulldogs being heavily favored to beat Clemson in the neutral-site matchup in Atlanta, McElroy brought up the fact that the Tigers lost their 2023 season opener on the road at Duke after entering the game as a double-digit favorite.

“Is it completely out of the realm of possibility that Georgia right now is currently a 14-point favorite? Need I remind you that Clemson last year, when they went on the road to Duke, was an 11.5-point favorite, and the home field being at Duke last year was worth, what, about three points? So, in a neutral site, Georgia being 14 and Clemson on the road at 11, it’s really not that wide of a gap when you take that into account,” McElroy said.

Clemson is looking to build on late-season momentum from 2023, when the Tigers sat at 4-4 at the end of October before ending the season on a five-game winning streak – the nation’s third-longest active streak behind only Michigan (15) and Arizona (7).

“I think a lot of people will look back at Clemson last year and say, ‘Well, they failed to win at least 10 games for the first time since 2010,’ and while that for many would be viewed as a significant disappointment, I actually look at where they were after a 4-4 start, really at a crossroads, and finishing with a five-game win streak, I think they have a lot of momentum coming into the season,” McElroy said.

Despite the departures of several key pieces from last year’s squad, Clemson returns a talented and relatively experienced team.

Offensively, McElroy thinks rising junior Cade Klubnik could be primed to make a big leap in his second full season as the Tigers’ starting quarterback, with Garrett Riley returning as offensive coordinator, a deep and talented receiving corps to work with, and a workhorse-type running back to lean on in veteran Phil Mafah.

“They’re going to look a lot like they looked last year,” McElroy said. “You’ve got the same offensive coordinator back in Garrett Riley. You’ve got the same quarterback back in Cade Klubnik. You would hope, at least I would hope, that Cade Klubnik will be a lot more comfortable this year. People forget — while Cade Klubnik was a five-star and they sprinkled him into some action in his true freshman year, the guy’s only started 13 or 14 games. It’s not like he’s played a ton of football. So, Cade Klubnik I think, maybe he’s poised to make a significant jump his second year in the offense, his second year with Riley and with what should be a better receiving corps.”

“Now, he’s gotta make better decisions. He threw nine picks last year, and he’s gotta have better ball security. He put the ball on the ground 10 times, five of which were lost. The good news is, I think they’re going to be able to run the football. I look at Phil Mafah, and while he was kind of used as a piece to kind of spell Will Shipley throughout the first half of last season, down the stretch, he really got it going. The last six games, nobody ran for more rushing touchdowns, and there were only two guys in the league that had more rushing yards per game down the stretch than Phil Mafah last year. And I look at Georgia… their Achilles heel last year was against the run.”

So to sum it all up, what if Clemson beats Georgia when the two teams square off at 12 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 31 in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium?

“If Clemson beats Georgia, that means that they’ve probably gotten improved quarterback play, they probably were able to run the football pretty well, they probably were able to create some one-on-one opportunities for their wide receivers, their young wide receivers that are hopefully going to get a little better this year, a little more consistent this year, and Georgia still maybe has a couple issues against the run that plagued them at times last year. So, that’s probably the recipe,” McElroy said.

“But man, that would be a massive result – not just for the ACC but also for Dabo Swinney in quieting some of the critics with how he’s approached the portal and some other aspects of the current format in college football.”

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