What's the matter with Clemson? Here's why it's not just about the transfer portal

A day after his team’s worst loss in more than a decade, Dabo Swinney was feeling optimistic.

This is unsurprising for two reasons. The first is that Swinney had watched the film of Clemson‘s 34-3 drubbing at the hands of top-ranked Georgia and saw a team that, according to him, matched Georgia physically and lost, in large part, due to a handful of unforced errors and an inability to capture any “momentum.”

The second is that Swinney is unapologetically optimistic in even the most dire of circumstances. Recall the last time Clemson lost in such emphatic fashion — a 54-14 embarrassment at home to eventual national champion Florida State in 2013, when Swinney’s postgame analysis approached delirium: “If we played them 10 times,” he said, “we’d have won five.”

And so it was again after Saturday’s loss.

“We matched up well. It didn’t go our way, but we were physical, we could run. We’ve got a good team,” Swinney said. “We’ve got a bunch of good, young talent. It’s going to come together, and it’s going to be fun to watch.”

Or, to borrow a Swinney analogy, Clemson’s stock took a bit of a hit against Georgia, but that only means the return on investment will be that much bigger when it finally takes off.

So, yes, Swinney feels good in the aftermath of Clemson’s latest debacle — the team’s seventh loss in its past 15 games against Power 4 competition. He’s building something — just as he has before — and he’s not interested in changing course simply because one game against the country’s best team didn’t go his way.

“We’ve done it in a unique way,” Swinney said. “Now people want me to go do it some other way. They’ve lost their freakin’ mind. I’m not doing it another way. Everything doesn’t go the way you want it every single time, but that doesn’t mean you get away from what your foundation is, what you believe.”

Swinney believes in building a program, and that means more than winning games. And on that front, he’s been exceptional.

Clemson’s player retention rate is among the best in the country — only Northwestern and Oklahoma State had fewer players leave in the December window than Clemson’s 12. The Tigers had the highest graduation rate of any Power 4 school (Georgia, in comparison, is last). Clemson is the only team in the country to rank in the top 25 in both the AP rankings and graduation rates for 13 years straight.

Even the wins and losses aren’t a clear-cut knock on Swinney’s approach. Clemson’s record from 2021 to ’23 — the supposed downturn of the program — was 30-10, the eighth-best mark of any program in that span.

In a vacuum, it’s reasonable to follow Swinney’s logic. Look back at all the losses that have accrued since Trevor Lawrence and Travis Etienne Jr. left town, and it feels like a meteoric shift, but each individual loss comes with strings attached: flukey turnovers, missed kicks, overtime defeats where a single play was the difference.

Even in Saturday’s blowout, Swinney believes that, had a few early plays gone Clemson’s way — a miss on Cade Klubnik‘s first pass, a big gain negated by an Adam Randall formation penalty — the rest of the game would’ve unfolded more favorably. The butterfly effect was Clemson’s problem, not talent.

Except it’s possible Swinney’s unyielding optimism is exactly the problem, and for an understanding of why, look to Swinney’s biggest taboo: the transfer portal.

The conventional wisdom follows that Swinney is simply a stubborn coach, tethered to an archaic way of thinking that has held the Tigers back from adding difference-makers via the portal. But this ignores two crucial realities. The first is that Swinney has made adjustments, including bringing in Garrett Riley to call the offense two years ago and hiring Matt Luke and Chris Rumph to his staff this season after critics had derided his long-standing practice of hiring internally.

The second is that Swinney isn’t alone in his reluctance to build a roster through free agency.

“I’m a big believer in retention, and I think Dabo believes that, too,” said Kirby Smart, whose win over Clemson was led, in part, by transfers Colbie Young and London Humphreys. “If I had my preference, I’d keep my team my team and coach my team and not have that constant turnover. Unfortunately, we have to deal with those circumstances and that makes it tougher. But I’m a big believer in getting the players we sign here and growing them and getting them better.”

That is, essentially, Swinney’s pronounced belief, too, even if he’s at the far end of the spectrum of coaches who’ve actually used the portal.

And as one Power 4 coach said of Swinney’s portal position, “You can still win a championship without the portal. The margin for error is just much smaller, and your flaws get much harder to hide.”

Since the modern portal began in 2018, Clemson has never had a transfer start a game. In the most recent cycle, only four schools did not take a single transfer: Clemson and the three service academies. For the latter three, an endorsement from a member of Congress is necessary. For Clemson, the bar may be even higher.

Swinney has, in fact, dabbled in the portal. Clemson made offers to a number of players over the past two years — particularly along the offensive line — but simply hasn’t reeled in any.

This is not, Swinney insists — emphatically, repeatedly — a philosophical opposition to the transfer portal. This is, like Clemson’s loss to Georgia, just a matter of happenstance and optimism. Some guys weren’t interested. The rest weren’t as good as he thinks the players already on his roster could be.

Swinney drew blowback in the spring for his latest attempt to rationalize his portal aversion with rhetorical gamesmanship by suggesting that everyone is a transfer from somewhere, and he’d just prefer to focus on guys transferring from high school to Clemson.

“There’s not one guy out there we wanted to bring in at this point,” Swinney said during the spring portal window. “Most of the guys in the portal now are guys getting pushed because people over-sign. We like our guys and we like our team.”

In the portal, Swinney sees mostly cast-offs. He looks at the high school recruits Clemson has signed and sees limitless potential. The reason Clemson hasn’t returned to its status as a perennial playoff team is that the results haven’t matched that potential.

Instead, Tigers fans have been left frustrated after Swinney and others spent an entire offseason raving about freshmen wideouts Bryant Wesco and T.J. Moore — quotes about how the pair was incredibly advanced at this stage, how the Tigers didn’t need veteran help at their most underperforming position because these two new faces would change the game.

Wesco played 12 snaps against Georgia. Moore played five. They combined for two catches for 12 yards, all in the fourth quarter after the game was out of hand.

Swinney took responsibility for problematic personnel choices and suggested Wesco and Moore would see far more action moving forward, but the imbalance between promise and performance is hardly an isolated incident. Receivers alone offer a stark reminder of that yawning chasm. From Joe Ngata to E.J. Williams Jr. to Beaux Collins, Clemson has shuffled nearly a dozen players through its receiving room in recent years that earned high praise from Swinney and the staff but did little on game day to justify the hype.

Still, when Swinney looks for help in the portal, his perception of his in-house talent underpins his requirements for new additions. Swinney said in 2023 that, if Clemson is going to add pieces in the portal, he wants all-conference players with significant experience.

That’s already a thin pool of options. Then Swinney adds that no one is guaranteed playing time and Clemson isn’t shelling out huge NIL sums for players who haven’t yet contributed to winning games at Clemson.

“We don’t use NIL in recruiting,” Swinney said. “Zero. But [former five-star recruit] Peter Woods came anyway. And they’re not leaving. They’re looking for what we are. We’re so unique in our approach, it’s like a magnet to the type of kid who’ll be successful here.”

So, boil that all down into an elevator pitch to transfers: You must be elite. You’re going to have to win a job against players here that Swinney already adores. There will be no NIL handouts without proven production. To be at Clemson is a privilege.

Is it any wonder Clemson hasn’t reeled in any big fish in the portal?

And, of course, the portal works both ways. Swinney flaunts the program’s retention rate, but as one opposing coach noted, in a world in which scholarships are capped at 85, there’s value in culling the herd and ridding a roster of players who aren’t contributing.

But again, Swinney can point to his impressive track record as ample evidence that his philosophy works — and will work again. Sure, his freshman receivers didn’t blossom against Georgia, but that’s just Week 1. Look back at Vic Beasley (eighth overall NFL draft pick in 2015), Kevin Dodd (33rd in 2016), Cornell Powell (fifth-round pick in 2021). Clemson has produced countless stars who spent the first two, three, four years in the program languishing with the scout team before bursting into the spotlight late in their college careers. If Swinney has done that for Beasley, why not Klubnik or Randall or Cole Turner?

“You’re not going to get Trevor Lawrence every year, but that doesn’t mean this guy doesn’t turn out and get to the same place,” Swinney said.

And herein lies the paradox for Clemson. Swinney sees the potential in this team every year. He recruited these guys, he knows them, he’s seen flashes of success and believes that, given the right mixture of time and circumstance, they’ll put up numbers like Lawrence or Deshaun Watson or Tajh Boyd. It has happened before, so it will happen again.

Reality, however, offers a more tepid metric. Clemson has not had a Day 1 or 2 NFL draft pick on offense since Lawrence and Etienne were selected in 2021, and it’s hard to imagine a member of this season’s roster that would reverse that trend in the near future.

“Trevor Lawrence covers up a lot of flaws,” one Power 4 coach said of Clemson. “When you don’t have that, the flaws become obvious.”

Or, as another coach offered: “You can still be a good team, but there aren’t a lot of great teams. Usually there are four or five teams that are way better than everybody else, and five or six that are imperfect but also better than everybody else. And then, 13 through, like, 40, is all the same thing.”

Swinney points often at the close losses — and, following the Georgia game, even the blowouts — and notes the handful of plays that might’ve set Clemson on a different course. But in the Lawrence era, most games didn’t come down to a handful of critical plays. Clemson was at the narrow end of the bell curve, one of those elite teams that was simply better than everyone else.

That’s what Clemson fans saw Saturday — a litmus test against one of the game’s best teams, where the Tigers didn’t measure up.

Instead, Clemson is firmly ensconced in the wide, nondescript middle ground. It is good enough to win against almost anyone, but it isn’t good enough to do so without playing nearly flawless football.

Still, Swinney looks at his team and sees the makings of a champion.

“I know there’s a lot of frustration and disappointment, and nobody feels that more than us,” he said. “But I think we’ve got a great season ahead.”

He may be right. Numerous coaches who spoke to ESPN suggested Clemson was still capable of making a run, with one saying unequivocally that the Tigers had the most talented roster in the ACC. The league’s champion is guaranteed a playoff bid this year, and the loss to Georgia does nothing to keep Clemson from winning the league.

As another ACC coach said, Swinney has won more games than anyone else in the league, even during a so-called downturn, so it would be foolish to suggest he needs to change his approach.

It’s a point Swinney reiterates often.

“I’m 54 years old,” Swinney said. “I’d have to be stupid to not believe based on what I’ve been through in my life — not football, my life. Where I’ve come from, how I’ve grown up, I’d have to be stupid to question my faith and not have belief. God didn’t put me here to fail. But I don’t look at it as a failure if you don’t win every game.”

So Swinney remains steadfast in his optimism. A glass-half-full coach sees the opportunity still ahead, sees the potential for greatness as a challenge worth pursuing. Swinney’s glass is filled to the brim.

“I know everybody will just point to the scoreboard, but it’s not always what you see, and as coaches, we know that,” Swinney said. “Lot of good stuff we can teach on and grow our team for a great season. It was a disappointing night but a great opportunity for us to build on it, and I really believe we can have a great season.”

Saturday’s loss may have been a harbinger of more problems ahead, but Swinney is hardwired to instead see it as an opportunity. It’s his only way forward.

And so the biggest question — for 2024 and beyond — isn’t whether Swinney will finally change his stripes and embrace the portal, but whether the players on Clemson’s current roster can live up to what their coach sees in them.