After an underachieving season exposed program cracks, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney embraces past failures as a spiritual catalyst to reshape habits and silence doubters in a high-stakes comeback campaign.
Clemson's past in the transfer portal and situation for NIL was exposed as an excuse in April when nine Tigers were taken within the first five rounds for the 2026 NFL Draft.
The Tigers went 7-6 in 2025, and didn't appear close to the team that picked in the preseason to make the College Football Playoff.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney made sweeping changes with leadership this offseason, though there are questions to be asked about not doing enough to boost the quarterback position this offseason.
During an appearance on the "Josh Pate College Football Show" on Wednesday, Swinney suggested that losing last year was a blessing, because the Tigers learned from the adversity.
"Sometimes you can do everything right and it doesn't go your way," Swinney said. "That's life too. And I think as a person of faith, like you know, if everything did go our way all the time and we never lost and we never had any adversity, we'd have no reason to depend on God, all right.
"But adversity is a part of life. It's a part of learning. Failure is a part of success, it just is. And last year in life, in our world, we didn't get it done and we did, we definitely underachieved, and that's my responsibility. We didn't perform, coach, or play to our potential, and that's the head coach's responsibility."
This offseason, Swinney is using the lesson of last season to teach his players that they control their own destiny. Clemson has been predicted to be in the CFP conversation for years because of previous success.
Now, it's up to his players to prove the doubters wrong.
“This is the greatest era in the history of Clemson football and honestly one of the greatest eras in the history of college football these past seventeen years," Swinney said. "But last year was a bad chapter. We wrote it, you know.”
"And that's what I tell our players all the time. It's not about what people predict. It's not about if it was about that we'd won the national championship last year. It's about what we do. What we do is a reflection of how we think. It's a reflection of our habits."
Swinney has gotten the best out of his players before, but it's been a while since the Tigers have been a threat to win a national championship.
If his players buy in this fall, Clemson could contend for the ACC championship. If they don’t, more questions will be asked about the direction of the program.