Clemson’s 22-10 loss to Penn State in the Pinstripe Bowl signifies the end of a long, disappointing season for Dabo Swinney’s Tigers.

With the 2025 campaign officially in the books, the longtime head coach now begins the process of making the necessary changes to ensure his program gets back to what is expected next season.

Swinney has been non-committal on any changes he is contemplating, outside of acknowledging the team has some work to do in the transfer portal when it opens on January 2. Then there is a team meeting a week later on January 9, when the team will offically turn the page towards 2026.

“Obviously, the portal opens on the 2nd, so we’ll have some recruiting we’ve got to do there, and then a team meeting on the 9th, and it’ll be a new team,” Swinney said after the loss. “We’ll have a banquet on the 10th, and we’ll celebrate this group, this amazing group of people that mean so much to me. Then we’ll put our eyes on to 2026 and see if we can have a better season this time next year.”

At the same time, Swinney admitted that he’s already been mulling over what changes need to be made and where. However, now that the season is over, he insists everything is up for evaluation, from the personnel to the members of his coaching staff. The head coach also insists that he will make any changes he deems necessary, but he also warned that what he sees might not align with what those on the outside see.

“It’s really more about just big picture of our issues from the season,” Swinney added. “I know what’s real, I know what’s not. I don’t read what everybody else writes. I know what’s real. I have a good perspective when it comes to things that are in our control and what we’ve got to do better. We’ve got great people. I love all the people on my staff.

“But you evaluate everything. That’s just a part of our business. It’s a part of the end of the season. You step back. I don’t make emotional decisions. But first and foremost, it starts with what happened. Is it personnel, is it scheme, is it bad calls, whatever. There’s a lot of things you evaluate as a coach.”

The eternal optimist that Swinney is, he also maintains that despite going 7-6 this season, his second-worst record as a head coach at Clemson, his team wasn’t as far off any many believed. It’s something he’s harped on throughout the season and after the ugly loss to the Nittany Lions, he once again doubled down.

“We’re a lot closer than people think,” Swinney said. “That’s one of them things, boy, if you say that you get torn up on social media. People rip you, I’m sure. But that’s the reality. I know what it is, and I know how close we are. It’s one more catch. It’s one more good throw. It’s a better call. It’s one stop. Next thing you know, you win a couple of those games that we lost early, and now you’ve got confidence and momentum and all those things matter. We just never got that. It certainly affected us.”

That doesn’t mean change isn’t on the horizon. It’s just that those decisions have yet to be made. At some point in the near future, that is exactly what he plans to do. But at the end of the day, right or wrong, Swinney fully believes his program will eventually benefit from the adversity faced in 2025.

“But again, evaluate everything, make good decisions based on what my perspective is, and I’ll change what I need to change, stay the course on what I believe I need to stay the course on,” Swinney said. “It’s never as good as you think, it’s never as bad as you think. I’ve done this a long time, and this is the second-worst season we’ve had in 17 years. There will be something good come from it, just like the last one we had in 2010. We had a lot of great things come from it. We’ll have a lot of great come from this one, as well.”