After a disappointing season, Dabo Swinney is reuniting with offensive architect Chad Morris. This polarizing hire will determine if the Tigers reclaim dominance or succumb to further decline.
Dabo Swinney admitted it was on him and the coaching staff for Clemson finishing with a 7-6 record last season.
Despite railing against teams abusing NIL and the transfer portal, the Tigers had plenty of talent in 2025, sending two players in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft. Five more players were taken in the next four rounds.
Swinney made key changes this offseason. He added help for the defense in the transfer portal. He hired special teams coach Rich Bisaccia, a former interim head coach at the NFL level.
His biggest and riskiest decision was bringing back Chad Morris as Clemson's offensive coordinator. The Tigers needed to part ways with Garrett Riley after a disastrous 2025, but Morris hasn't called plays in six years.
During the "Josh Pate's College Football Show" on Sunday, the host argued Morris would need to make an immediate impact for the Tigers to be competitive in the ACC in the upcoming season.
“Chad Morris went to Clemson," Pate said. "We just sat down with Debo last week. He talked about in 2010 how they had high expectations and then things crashed and burned and what did he do?
"Well he had Chad Morris and hired him as his offensive coordinator and now all these years later, that's what they're doing. They're getting part of the band back together and bringing Chad Morris back as offensive coordinator... You know what? They won double-digit games every year that Morris was there as offensive coordinator the time before."
Swinney told Pate last week that Clemson can use last year as a lesson.
"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."
It remains to be seen if Swinney's players will buy into that message this year. If Morris can return the offense to what it was before 2021, it will be a massive win for the Tigers. If Morris is stagnant, it will be another long fall for Clemson.