CHARLOTTE – Tyler Davis is back for his fifth season at Clemson in 2023, and at the ACC Football Kickoff on Thursday, the star defensive tackle spoke about why he wanted to return to the Tigers for another year.

“Me, just knowing I can maximize myself here,” Davis explained. “Me and Ruke (Orhorhoro) talked about it, that Coach (Nick) Eason just got there and we feel like we had one of our best years, just being over here for one year. And then we got our strength coaches… Knowing all that, I said why not have this chance to go win a natty, and I got the best linebacker duo and got guys like JP (Jalyn Phillips), Sheridan (Jones), Nate Wiggins, RJ Mickens, Andrew Mukuba’s back there in the secondary. Why not just go ahead and have one of the best defenses and go win a natty.”

As a follow-up question to the natty comment, Davis was asked if he feels Clemson has to win a national championship in order to call it a successful season.

“I would say in my book, yes,” Davis said. “I mean, we come here, that’s one of our goals. We come here to graduate and win a championship and to leave better prepared as a man. So I’d say yes, to have a successful season, you have to win a championship of some sort.”

A first-team All-ACC selection as a senior in 2022, Davis started 11 of the 12 games that he played in last season and finished with 27 tackles (9.5 for loss), 5.5 sacks, a pass breakup and a fumble recovery.

A three-time All-ACC selection — including back-to-back first-team honors in 2021 and 2022 — Davis has tallied 122 tackles (26.0 for loss), 15.5 sacks, four pass breakups and three fumble recoveries over 43 games (39 starts) thus far in his four-year career as a Tiger (2019-22).

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