One of the biggest matchups of week one will take place in Clemson.

It is the battle of the Death Valleys, with LSU traveling to Memorial Stadium to take on Dabo Swinney’s Tigers.

In recent weeks, there has been no shortage of talk coming from the LSU side, with most of it coming from Brian Kelly. On multiple occasions, the head coach has taken shots at Clemson and its use of “Death Valley” as the nickname for its stadium. Despite it being well-documented that Clemson was using it first, Kelly said LSU is just letting Clemson borrow the moniker, while on a different occasion, calling Clemson’s stadium “Death Valley Junior.”

Kelly has also talked about the opener being “circled” on the LSU schedule, and how it’s the first time he’s ever done that as a head coach. He’s also spoken publicly about his Tigers’ facility being littered with Clemson Tiger Paws.

However, Clemson is choosing to take a different approach. During last week’s ACC Kickoff, Cade Klubnik, Peter Woods and TJ Parker were each asked about Kelly’s comments, with none really taking the bait.

“I got no comment. I got no comment,” Klubnik said. “We’ll… yeah, no comment.”

Klubnik actually talked about taking the opposite approach.

“I think our mentality is, we’re keeping our head down, just kind of keeping it low,” he said. “We’re going to work every single day. We’re not a loud team. We’re not going to be shouting and yapping and hollering a whole lot about what we’re doing or what we’re going to do. We’re just putting our head down and go to work.”

And Parker echoed those same sentiments.

“They can have their opinion,” he said. “We’re gonna handle all that on August 30. At the end of the day, we can do all the talking. We still got to play. So, we’re gonna see.”

Woods said people could fact-check Kelly’s remarks, but that was as far as he was willing to go.

“I cannot talk my way into a win. Everybody has their own opinion,” Woods said. “The facts exist as well. There is Google if you want to research that, you can look it up if you care that much.”

Make no mistake, it’s a huge first game for both teams. The first goal for Clemson every season is to win the opener, and it is something they’ve not done since 2022, before Klubnik had taken the reins full-time. The Tigers also dropped all three games they played against SEC competition last season, and losing this one would be the start of a narrative that would be hard to turn, no matter what happens the rest of the way in the regular season.

As big as it is, it has been interesting to see the different approaches from each team. For LSU, it appears to be go big or go home, while Clemson is basically treating it like it would any other game.

“Obviously, excited for the first game,” Klubnik said. “It’s going to be a great opportunity for us. It’s a great opportunity for us with a great opponent.”

“We’re excited for every game this year. Every game has to be treated like it’s the National Championship, whether it’s Week 1, Week 5, Week 8. We have to take advantage of every single week because that’s what college football, that’s what it is, and you have to give the highest respect to every opponent that you have, and that’s the type of mentality that I try to have, and that’s the mentality that Coach Swinney gives us every single week.”