Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was asked during his Tuesday press conference if he knows who the Tigers’ starting punter will be.

Swinney admits the punter competition might not be decided until pregame warmups before Saturday’s game against LSU.

“Maybe, maybe, maybe. I might watch pregame warmups, it might be coming down to that,” Swinney said.

Redshirt juniors Jack Smith, Will McCune and Robert Gunn III are all competing for the starting punter position.

“Again, as I’ve said, we’ve got a competition, and I think we’re as far as we can go into the competition without going to the games,” Swinney said. “Because they’ve all been really good, and they’ve all been just OK.”

Swinney added that this isn’t a situation like it was at kicker back in 2023, when the Tigers pulled Jonathan Weitz out of retirement.   

“It’s, again, not a situation like we had a couple years ago when we were breaking in a new kicker, and we just didn’t have any answers. That was when we went and got Weitz,” Swinney said.

“I think we’ve got the answers here, but we’re at a point where, sometimes you’ve just gotta go play. … Somebody’s gotta run out there first, but then we’ve got to let them play, and then we’ll go from there. … That’s what you want. You want competition, and we’ve got good competition, but we need it to turn into good production, and that’s the expectation.”

Swinney believes “all three guys can do the job and do it well, but we’re just at that point where nobody has really, truly separated” in the competition.

“And it’s not because they all stink,” he said. “It’s because they’ve all done well. … We can’t simulate what they’re going to see Saturday night, so we gotta get to the games and then we’ll go from there.”

Kickoff between Swinney’s fourth-ranked Tigers and the No. 9 LSU Tigers from Clemson’s Memorial Stadium is set for 7:30 p.m. on ABC.