College GameDay host Rece Davis had Clemson at No. 1 in his preseason AP Top 25 ballot and picked the Tigers to win the national championship this year. Now, after coming into this season as the No. 4 team in the AP Poll, the Tigers have plummeted out of the rankings and have sputtered to a 1-3 start for the first time ever under Dabo Swinney and the first time since 2004.
On the College GameDay Podcast, Davis dove into Clemson’s struggles and main issues.
There are a lot of issues in Tiger Town right now, but is one of them that Clemson’s roster lacks unity?
“I want to preface this by saying, I don’t believe this is the case. I don’t believe that there are the proverbial internal issues at Clemson,” Davis said. “I’m not saying that. But how they play on the field is they play like a team that doesn’t really like each other. Not like they dislike each other, but that they’re sort of ambivalent about each other. There’s not the stinger, the spirit, the hunger — that’s what’s missing.
“Brent Key from Georgia Tech had a quote that he said Saban used to use in their staff meetings all the time, that applies to Clemson: ‘A lot more guys have died trying to come back down Mount Everest than they did going up Mount Everest.’ Because maybe you lose a little bit of that will once you hit the mountaintop, which Clemson has.”
Whatever Clemson’s problems may be, Davis believes Swinney can solve them.
“I think Dabo can fix it,” he said. “Maybe this is just a bad mix of ingredients or not a championship mix.”
Though he thinks Swinney can ultimately sort things out, Davis still sees the Tigers suffering more losses over the rest of this season.
“Now, the math, the realism in you, compels you to say this. They have two ACC losses. It seems impossible that they would make the ACC Championship. And it, for sure, is highly unlikely,” Davis said.
“But they get Florida State at their place. They don’t play Miami. If there is chaos below them, they could hold at least one tiebreaker. So, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think there are more losses in front of Clemson, based on what I’ve seen. I don’t think they are done losing, but you never know.”