CLEMSON – In this day and age, when a player can leave at any point in his career, it is easy for a freshman or underclassman who did not play much to up and leave for another school.

Like every school, Clemson is not immune to these situations.

“That is just the way of the world,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said Tuesday during his weekly press conference at the Smart Family Media Center. “That is a yearly thing. We communicate with our guys daily. That is not something we do once a year.”

This year is a little bit different for the Tigers. They are in the midst of the program’s worse season since 2010, standing with a 5-5 record. There is no ACC Championship Game or College Football Playoff to look forward to.

In other words, the sharks might be circling the program in hopes of stealing some of Clemson’s more promising young players. Guys like wide receivers T.J. Moore, Bryant Wesco and Tyler Brown, tight ends Christian Bentancur and Logan Brookings, running back Gideon Davidson and linebacker Sammy Brown to name a few.

“There will be some guys maybe you expect to leave, and there will be some other guys that might surprise you. I don’t know,” Swinney said. “We never know. You never know.”

Swinney likes his young players and says they are a good group of young people and he is hoping they will return. But in the end, in this day and age of college football, you never really know what a player is or is not going to do.

“Those are all real-time things as they come about, but we have a great group of guys that I think love Clemson,” he said. “They came here for the right reasons. Again, you just react for whatever comes your way.”