Clemson’s full 2026 football schedule was announced by the ACC on Monday.

During ACC Network’s ACC Huddle: Football Schedule Release special on Monday, ACCN analyst and former Clemson/All-ACC offensive lineman Eric Mac Lain gave some thoughts on the Tigers’ schedule and how he thinks it sets up for 2026.

Mac Lain first touched on Clemson’s season opener, which will pit Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney’s Tigers against the LSU Tigers, led by new head coach Lane Kiffin.

Following the 2025 season opener that saw LSU beat Clemson, 17-10, in a top-10 matchup at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium, Clemson will kick off the 2026 campaign on Sept. 5, when it faces LSU at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La.

It will mark Clemson’s first trip to Baton Rouge and Clemson’s first time opening a season in an SEC venue since opening its 2016 national championship season with a 19-13 win at Auburn.

“First of all, can we get back to those boys playing in the national championship? Those videos look great. I would love to be there, to witness that all over again. That would be a lot of fun,” Mac Lain said of Clemson.

“And it starts right here with this schedule and the things that they need to do and what they need to bring to the table, and it starts in a hurry, as you travel to Baton Rouge there to play an LSU team that is loaded. What they’ve done in the transfer portal has been truly amazing. To see that [Clemson is] going to have a new quarterback and a new offensive coordinator working together for the first time, in that stadium against that team, is truly going to be amazing.”

Fast forward to the end of the 2026 regular season, and Clemson will round out its ACC schedule by playing at Syracuse (Nov. 6 or Nov. 7), vs. Georgia Tech (Nov. 14) and at Duke (Nov. 21).

“And then just looking at the revenge tour that Clemson can go on here – at Syracuse, Georgia Tech, and then at Duke – three teams that Clemson lost to last year,” Mac Lain added.

In 2026, Clemson hopes to bounce back from a 7-6 record in 2025, the second-worst season in head coach Dabo Swinney’s full 17 seasons. After a 3-5 start, Clemson won its last four regular season games in 2025 as the program became bowl eligible for a 27th consecutive season.

Coming into last season, the Tigers were ranked fourth in the AP Poll and one of the media darlings of the offseason. Multiple national analysts even picked Clemson to win the national title.

During the 2025 season, Swinney admitted that he didn’t think the Tigers handled preseason expectations well and that his team bought into the outside noise. Now, Mac Lain wonders how the 2026 team will handle expectations that figure to be much lower than they were last year.

“The interesting thing about Clemson, going into this season from a national, big-dog perspective – I don’t think there’s a ton of expectation,” Mac Lain said. “How does that team handle that, how does that team play kind of in the shadows, and how do they kind of get out of that back to where they are expected to do something?”