Coming off three straight wins during its three-game homestand, Clemson will now hit the road to face Florida State next Saturday, Oct. 5.
“This will be our first real opportunity, true road game, to see if we can go play well,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said following his team’s 40-14 victory over Stanford on Saturday night at Death Valley.
Swinney – whose 17th-ranked Tigers improved to 3-1 (2-0 ACC) with Saturday’s win – was asked how much he has kept up with the Seminoles this season, and former Clemson quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, who transferred from Oregon State to FSU for the 2024 campaign.
“Very little,” Swinney answered. “I’ve just been focused on what we’re doing week in and week out. I obviously keep up with things in the conference, but I’ll put all my attention on them starting tonight and in the morning. But it’s been all about whatever we’ve been doing – whatever moment we’re in, that’s where all my focus has been, and nothing else.”
A disastrous season for FSU continued on Saturday night, when Uiagalelei was benched at SMU and replaced by highly regarded redshirt freshman quarterback Brock Glenn, with the Seminoles down big in the fourth quarter of their 42-16 loss to the Mustangs.
The defending ACC champ, FSU was picked to win the 2024 conference title in the ACC preseason media poll. But the Seminoles sputtered out of the gate with three straight losses to open this season and became just the third team to go from being ranked in the preseason AP top 10 to unranked in the first regular-season poll.
Is Swinney surprised that the Noles now sit at 1-4 on the season (1-3 ACC) after Saturday’s loss to SMU?
“Of course,” Swinney said. “That is surprising, there’s no question about that. They’re a really, really talented team. It doesn’t matter what their record is. I know who their personnel is. They’re a really talented group, and we better have a great week and we’re going to have to play well.”
Swinney pointed out that the Tigers were 4-4 last season when they hosted what was then a top-15 Notre Dame team last November at Death Valley. Clemson, of course, beat the Irish 31-23 and finished the 2023 season on a five-game winning streak.
“We didn’t have a very good record last year when Notre Dame rolled in here,” Swinney said. “We probably weren’t a very favored team. So, you’ve got to show up every week, play to a standard. You don’t play to a record, you don’t play to an opponent or where you are – it’s all about just playing to a standard, week in and week out. That’s how you create consistency. So, none of that stuff should matter. If it does, you’re going to be a very inconsistent program, a very inconsistent team.”
Next Saturday will mark the first meeting between Clemson and FSU since the Tigers’ heartbreaking overtime loss to the Seminoles last September. Though Clemson is 7-1 in its last eight meetings with Florida State, including wins in each of the last three games in Tallahassee, the Seminoles are the last team to have defeated the Tigers in back-to-back years, doing so in a three-year span from 2012-14.
Heading into this year’s game, Swinney knows “anybody can beat anybody” and says he doesn’t care what FSU’s record is.
“I know who Florida State is,” he said. “I know what type of personnel they have, and I’ve got a lot of respect for them as a team.”
Clemson and FSU will kick off at 7 p.m. next Saturday at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee. The game will be televised on ESPN.
A limited number of signed replica road signs from Cade Klubnik are available! Visit Clemson Variety & Frame or purchase online!
