On his Always College Football show, ESPN analyst Greg McElroy gave an in-depth preview of some marquee Week 1 matchups.
Among the big Week 1 “prove it” games that McElroy broke down is Saturday’s season opener between No. 1 Georgia and 14 th -ranked Clemson in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium (12 p.m., ABC).
The Tigers will attempt to earn their first win against the Bulldogs since 2013 in a matchup of regional rivals that have accounted for four of the last eight national championships.
The two teams most recently met in 2021, a 10-3 Georgia victory. The Bulldogs are a 13.5-point favorite entering this year’s matchup.
“It’s really cool to see them on the field. We saw it a couple years ago, and it should be really exciting,” said McElroy, who will serve as the color commentator for ABC’s broadcast of the Clemson-UGA game.
In the Clemson-UGA series’ 17 installments since 1980, the winner of this contest went on to win the national championship three times.
Clemson (9-4, 4-4 ACC in 2023) hopes to return to the College Football Playoff for the first time since 2020 following six straight playoff appearances from 2015-20.
After missing the playoff last year, Georgia (13-1, 8-1 SEC in 2023) is looking to get back in the playoff this season and win what would be the program’s third national championship in four years, following back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022.
McElroy weighed in on the question, “Are these two programs that are heading in different directions?”
“There’s some perception that they might be,” McElroy said. “Just based on how things have looked the last couple years for Clemson and Georgia, people think one’s on the way up, or is at very least, at the top of the sport. Other people seem to think it’s going in the wrong direction. I don’t know if I agree with that, but over the last three years, Georgia has as many loses as they do national championships. They have two championships, they have two losses. Their only losses over that span came against Bama. So, they’ve obviously done quite well. Clemson, by comparison, has lost three games in each of the last three seasons. They went 9-4 last year, and it’s the first time that they won less than 10 games since 2010.
“The reason why people think it’s not going so well for Clemson is because they have been slow to adopt the modern era of the sport. Clemson, in 2023 and 2024, brought in zero transfers… They also have zero percent total starts from Clemson players that have come from transfer portal… But people think Georgia’s going into the portal. Georgia doesn’t have that much of a differentiation in philosophy from Clemson. Just 12 percent of their starts come from the portal, which is 119 th in the FBS. So, both really lean into high school recruiting, but Clemson has not added the few pieces that Georgia has the last couple years to kind of fortify their roster and maybe cover up some weak points. Doesn’t mean that Clemson hasn’t tried, they just haven’t landed some of those players.”
McElroy went on to discuss four questions that he believes will determine the outcome of the Clemson-UGA matchup: Can Clemson’s heavy pressure affect Carson Beck? Can Georgia beat man coverage? Can Clemson run the ball? Can Clemson create big plays?
You can watch McElroy’s full commentary on those questions and the Clemson-UGA game, beginning at the 1:35 mark of the following video:
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