During a recent episode of his See Ball Get Ball show, David Pollack had plenty to say about Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney and his football program.

Pollack, the ex-ESPN analyst and former Georgia/NFL linebacker, weighed in on the future of Swinney and the Tigers.

Pollack is one of the analysts who was “all in” on Clemson in the preseason last year and picked the Tigers to win it all in 2025, only to see Swinney’s team endure a highly disappointing campaign where Clemson finished with its second-worst record of Swinney’s tenure at 7-6.

Now, looking ahead to the upcoming season, Pollack doesn’t expect this to be the year the Tigers get back on track to the level of success they enjoyed while winning double-digit games every year from 2011-22, and then again in 2024. However, Pollack doesn’t believe things will be nearly as dismal for Swinney and the Tigers in 2026.

“Listen, I respect Dabo doing it his way,” Pollack said. “… I don’t think next year they’re going to bounce back and they’re going to win 11 games, but I don’t expect them to be near what they were a year ago. I do think they still have a ton of talent on their roster.”

Pollack says he isn’t giving up on Swinney, who has led the Tigers to nine ACC titles and a pair of national titles in 2016 and 2018, but has won fewer than 10 games in two of the last three seasons and has made the College Football Playoff only once since 2020 – in 2024, when Clemson won the ACC and earned a berth in the inaugural 12-team CFP.

“When you win as much as he has, and when you are the type of leader and the type of man he is, and what you’ve done at Clemson – like, you got two national titles, bro,” Pollack said. “I know everybody says it’s dying. And listen, they’ve got to do some things to get more talent, and they’ve got to get some good quarterback play if they want to take that next step to get back. But let’s not act like they were a bunch of bums when they won the ACC two years ago and they were 10-4. Let’s not act like they didn’t win nine before that, and 11 and 10 and 10, and then we can keep going back to 15 and 14, obviously, where it was a different world.

“It’s a different world we’re living in, in college football now. We’re still figuring it out. And I think Dabo has some figuring out to do, because we’re not at four anymore. The conference championship isn’t what it used to be anymore. But I’m betting on Dabo. Let’s put it that way. I’m going to bet on the man, the character, who he is, for the future. That’s just how I would play it just because of what I’ve seen. But I understand what people are saying. That’s OK.”

Pollack was asked what’s more likely – that Clemson wins the ACC once again this year, or that the Tigers are looking for a new head coach after the season.

“Dabo is doing it differently, which you have to respect. I respect it. I respect the piss out of it,” Pollack said. “I think there’s a lot of people that do, but I do think there’s a lot of people that don’t. And there’s a lot of people that are going to say, ‘All I care about is the money and the winning.’ But it’s not like they’re not paying players. They’re paying players. They just pay their best players, and they don’t believe in paying guys a ton of money to come to your school. He’s not different than a lot of people.

“If he hits on the quarterback — which is a big if, and I don’t think it’s going to happen this year — but I don’t think next year, I don’t think if he has another season where he wins eight games, nine games — I don’t think he’s going to be fired. So I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think he’ll be fired.”

Pollack believes that last season was an “anomaly” for the Tigers, but reiterated they’re “going to have to find their quarterback” to lead the program back to elite status moving forward.

“Last year was not the norm of what Clemson’s been,” Pollack said. “Last year, if you look at Clemson, they’re a team that wins 10 games a year. That’s just what Dabo has done. And so not doing that obviously, they take a step back. And what happens when you take a step back? Now, you become more of a team that gets shots taken at them. And listen, that’s what happens. That’s part of life. Now there are question marks, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with having question marks about a program. I think it’s OK to say, hey, we have question marks. Where is this program going?

“They’re going to have to find their quarterback. They’re going to have to find him. Cade Klubnik, a couple years ago, that dude had an unbelievable season. … Listen, [offensive coordinator] Chad Morris comes back, I think the offense — the running game becomes a more pivotal part of who they are, of what they are, the diversity. The tempo will be more of what Clemson was when they were great. But they dang sure better find a guy to spin it.”

Pollack added that while Clemson obviously needs to improve in 2026, that takes nothing away from Swinney’s pride in his program’s culture.

“This is something that clearly differentiates my program from yours. This is what we do,” Pollack said of Swinney’s Clemson culture. “What we do is graduate players. What we do is retain players. People don’t leave Clemson for a reason. When you have more draft picks last year than wins in a season, that’s also not good. There’s the other side of the coin. But if I’m a coach and I have the ability to brag about retention and graduation rate, when it’s over 90 percent, that is a feather in my cap and that’s something that I’m just telling you, as a dad of a kid that is a recruit now and starting to get recruited by a college, that’s a great thing to me.”