Heading into the 2025 campaign, ESPN analyst Greg McElroy was higher on Clemson than any other team in college football.
When he ranked his top 10 teams going into the 2025 season, McElroy put Clemson at No. 1 in his preseason top 10. Now, he has the Tigers a lot lower after their Week 1 loss to the Bayou Bengals.
In an episode of his Always College Football show, McElroy updated his top 25 after Week 1, and Clemson tumbled to No. 12 after its 17-10 loss to LSU in last Saturday’s season opener at Clemson’s Death Valley. LSU, meanwhile, vaulted up from No. 7 to No. 2 in McElroy’s updated rankings.
McElroy explained why he dropped Dabo Swinney’s team so far in his latest top 25.
“I had them No. 1 in the preseason. Here’s my problem with Clemson – I didn’t think they offered up much of anything in the run game,” McElroy said. “They gotta take some pressure off the quarterback. I don’t care how good and how relentless the pass rush is, I don’t care how good the wide receivers are, I don’t care how good Cade Klubnik is – they have to be able to hand the ball off, to neutralize the aggressiveness of the opposing defense. I didn’t think they did a very good job of that in Week No. 1. I also became immediately concerned about what we saw occasionally from the offensive line.”
Clemson, of course, ran for just 31 yards on 20 carries against LSU.
Clemson also struggled in the passing game, with star quarterback Cade Klubnik finishing 19-of-38 for 230 yards and an interception. In comparison, his average last season featured 293 all-purpose yards per game with 2.6 touchdowns.
McElroy added that he also didn’t like the way Klubnik played in the LSU game.
“I thought he made some mistakes, I thought he pressed, I thought he allowed the pass rush to get to him,” McElroy said. “He allowed the blitz packages to get to him. That can’t happen. Not when you’re in year three as a starting quarterback. He’s too good, he’s too talented, he’s played too much football to allow the pass rush and hits to have that kind of an effect on his decision-making and on his accuracy. So, 12 is where I have Clemson. Big fall down from where they were in the preseason.”
Clemson will try to work out the kinks this week in what some might call a “get-right game” – Saturday’s contest against Troy at Death Valley. Clemson is a 33.5-point favorite entering the game, which is set to kick off at 3:30 p.m. and will be televised on ACC Network.
You can see McElroy’s full post-Week 1 top 25 below:
- Ohio State
- LSU
- Penn State
- Georgia
- Oregon
- Miami
- Texas
- Florida State
- Utah
- Notre Dame
- South Carolina
- Clemson
- Tennessee
- Oklahoma
- Michigan
- Iowa State
- Southern Cal
- Arizona State
- Illinois
- Florida
- Auburn
- Ole Miss
- Texas A&M
- TCU
- Texas Tech