CLEMSON — After experiencing seven decommitments in the last recruiting cycle, Clemson suffered four in the 2026 class.

All four have come since the start of the season, with the final one coming on Early Signing Day as four-star S Kaden Gebhardt flipped to Ohio State.

However, in this new era, where recruiting has become extremely transactional, no program will be immune to decommitments.

As of late Wednesday, there had been more than 800 decommitments across the country in the current recruiting cycle, so in the grand scheme of things, four isn’t too bad.

Either way, Dabo Swinney is only looking forward. The head coach isn’t concerned about the losses suffered along the way.

“You are always going to have somebody somewhere along the way,” Swinney said during his signing day press conference. “I don’t really focus on or get distracted by those not here.”

With the Tigers experiencing their worst season since 2010, Swinney and the rest of the staff had to work hard at keeping the bulk of the class together. After the 1-3 start, the vultures were circling.

“Big picture, in a season like this, where there is so much negativity and attack on your program, attack on the coach, and all this stuff, because that is what we do when things don’t go exactly the way we had planned — for a group of young people, who that is their world, that is what they have grown up with, for them to block all that out and say, ‘No, this is what we’re doing,’ and we absolutely align with what their values are and what they are about, and to have that type of conviction and belief and it don’t matter if we went 7-5 or 12-0 — this is a special group.”

In fact, Swinney insists that in a lot of ways, this current class reminds him of the one following that 6-7 season in 2010.

That class featured players like Sammy Watkins, Grady Jarrett, Tony Steward, BJ Goodson, Eric Mac Lain and Martavis Bryant, just to name a few. Players that helped lay the foundation for the unprecedented success that Clemson saw just a few years later and Swinney is hopeful this class will feature a little of that same magic.

“That is why I compare this group with that 2011 class that came here when we were 6-7,” Swinney said. “All you got to do is look what we did and what we started. I really believe this is a special group of people because they’ve got a special type of commitment.

Photo by Bart Boatwright