On his Always College Football show, ESPN analyst Greg McElroy broke down his tiers in the ACC for the 2025 season.

McElroy put two teams — Clemson and Miami – in Tier 1 as national championship contenders.

“We will start with a team that should be ranked top 2, top 3 — at worst, top 4 — in college football heading into the season, and that is the Clemson Tigers,” McElroy said. “The expectations are sky-high. It feels like 2025 has been the year that they’ve circled for quite some time. They have veterans in pivotal places. They even have gone to the portal in a couple spots to reinforce some places that had some depth issues from a year ago.

“It all starts, though, with Cade Klubnik. Great year in 2024, after what was kind of a learning curve year in ’23. Feels like he’s poised to take the next step. I think you can make a strong argument that he’s the best quarterback returning in college football. He also won’t have to do it himself. They have tremendous talent at wide receiver — Antonio Williams, Bryant Wesco, T.J. Moore, a handful of others that can all contribute and play at a really high level. And then defensively, you gotta love what they have back along the defensive line, and how they’ve reinforced that position with a couple of pivotal impactful transfers.”

Speaking of those transfers, McElroy likes what former Alabama edge rusher Jeremiah Alexander and former Purdue defensive end Will Heldt bring to a Clemson defensive front seven that McElroy expects to be “outstanding.”

“It’s been really good for a long time. It should come as no surprise,” McElroy said of the front seven. “But if you look at Peter Woods, he’s probably going to be sliding back to a more natural position at defensive tackle. I look at what they have back at defensive end — that was a position last year where they struggled a little bit. I’m not saying struggled significantly, but they struggled a little bit because they just didn’t have depth. So when T.J. Parker, their outstanding defensive end, went off the field… when he was off the field, there was a pretty considerable drop to the backups. And if you’re T.J. Parker, you can’t play 65 snaps a game. It’s just too many. So I think they’re more equipped to handle the challenges of getting through their season unscathed.

“I also like the transfer Jeremiah Alexander at linebacker. I like Will Heldt, who’s going to be there on the edge to kind of offset the attention that T.J. Parker will likely get.”

McElroy added that he “absolutely” loves the Tigers’ defensive coordinator hire of former Indiana head coach Tom Allen, who of course spent the 2024 season as Penn State’s defensive coordinator/linebackers coach and helped guide the Nittany Lions to the College Football Playoff.

“He’s aggressive, he’s disciplined,” McElroy said. “They can do a lot of different things, and I do think the guys, when you watch Tom Allen in the past, everywhere he’s been – whether it was at Indiana, at Penn State, even as a coordinator prior to becoming a head coach – the guys always played outrageously hard for him.”

McElroy noted that Clemson’s biggest question mark entering the upcoming season comes on the offensive side of the ball at the running back spot.

“Running back, I believe is a bit of a question,” he said, “but they go out and they add Gideon Davidson, who was one of the highest-rated freshmen running back recruits in the entire country. We’ve seen in the past already Clemson rely on freshmen running backs, and they ultimately go on and have great success early in their careers. [Travis] Etienne comes to mind. Will Shipley comes to mind. Phil Mafah got plenty of action as a young player as well. So, running back is one position that I am pretty curious about, but I’m optimistic about that group in total because of how good they should be along the offensive line — that should be a position of strength — and how good they should be in the passing attack with a veteran quarterback and outstanding wide receivers.”

Looking at Clemson on the whole, McElroy thinks the Tigers have “as many known commodities on their roster as anyone in college football.”

“Penn State might have a few more superstar pieces, but I don’t think Clemson takes a backseat to very many,” he said. “They have everything you could possibly want to make a national championship run. … There are some possible hurdles that Clemson will have to overcome [on its 2025 schedule.] But all things considered, I’d be surprised if we fast forward to the end of the season and this team isn’t at least in the ACC Championship Game and in strong position to get one of those top 4 seeds in the College Football Playoff.”

As for why McElroy included Miami with Clemson in Tier 1, as a national title contender?

“A lot of people might push back on that – ‘Well, Miami can make the playoff, but can they win the national championship?’ I am a believer,” he said. “I look at where this team has gone the last couple of years, where they’ve progressed the last couple of years, and I happen to think this could be maybe the best year in Mario Cristobal’s tenure up to this point.”

You can see McElroy’s full ACC tiers below and hear his commentary on each team in the following video:

Tier 1 (National Championship Contenders): Clemson, Miami

Tier 2 (CFP Contenders): Louisville, Georgia Tech, SMU, Florida State

Tier 3 (Spoilers): Pitt, Duke, Virginia Tech, NC State, North Carolina

Tier 4 (Bowl Bound): Boston College, Syracuse, Virginia

Tier 5 (Work to Do): Cal, Stanford, Wake Forest