On the SVPod, ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt and “Stanford Steve” Coughlin broke down the Week 4 college football slate, including another bad Clemson loss, this time to Syracuse, 34-21 at Death Valley.

“Syracuse went in there and jumped them,” Van Pelt said. “Were up early, up several scores early. They had yet another one of these prolonged weather delays. I wondered, can that help the home team? No. Syracuse was better. They’re just better.”

Clemson, which began the season ranked No. 4 in the AP Poll and had preseason national championship aspirations, fell to 1-3 this season and 0-2 in ACC play.

It is the worst start in the Dabo Swinney era and the first time the Tigers have started a season 1-3 since 2004.

“So now this is a pair of losses on your home field [to LSU and Syracuse], and a win against a Troy team that you trailed by 16,” Van Pelt said. “And it’s middle of September.”

Cuse came into Saturday’s game as a 17.5-point underdog. According to Action Network Media & Research Director Evan Abrams, it marks the third worst loss by point spread for Clemson under Swinney (-24 at Syracuse, 2017; -21.5 vs. Pitt, 2016).

“I talk often about when a team that’s the underdog wins a game, like, it was an upset but it wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t a mistake,” Van Pelt said. “It wasn’t.”

Count Van Pelt among those in the national media who were very high on Clemson heading into the 2025 season, but who have now had to admit they were wrong about Swinney’s squad.

“I’m just owning this, that I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Van Pelt said. “I thought Clemson was something this year you could count on, and you can already count three Ls, which is mind-boggling. I didn’t think that would be what they were.”

Before the season, Van Pelt said Clemson was “the team that I believe in the most.”

“That’s their saying in Clemson [All In]. … I’ll put my chip in there with them. … That’s the thing I feel best about, the team that I believe in the most, that I just, I felt like I saw it last year,” Van Pelt said in late August.

“They’ve invested within their program. They’ve retained the people that matter. They’ve got freaks on defense, and [Cade] Klubnik, I think, can do it. And you saw those young receivers grow throughout the year last year. That’s a team I really like.”

–Photo courtesy Kirby Lee-Imagn Images