National college football analyst Josh Pate recently joined the Crain & Cone college sports show to break down and preview the Week 1 matchup between Clemson and LSU.

The two teams will kick off their respective 2026 seasons on Sept. 5, when Dabo Swinney’s Tigers face off against Lane Kiffin’s Tigers at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La.

Clemson is currently an 11.5-point underdog against LSU, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.

Pate was asked what would surprise him more in the game – Clemson winning by seven points, or LSU winning by 20-plus.

“I think it would surprise me a little bit more, Clemson winning by seven,” Pate said. “Only because there’s a world where an LSU 20-point win is 27-6 or something like that. Clemson’s offense is just non-functional, and LSU grinds out a win. It’s a four-quarter thing, probably a defensive score in there.”

However, given the wide array of unknowns and uncertainty surrounding the start of a new season and Week 1 matchups in college football, some things might “surprise” Pate but nothing would really “shock” him.  

“I will tell you this – you said ‘surprise.’ And that’s the right word,” Pate said. “I don’t use the word ‘shock’ in Week 1 anymore, in this sport. I am not gonna use the word ‘shock.’”

Coming into the season opener against LSU on August 30, 2025 – what was a top-10 matchup at the time — Clemson was ranked fourth in the AP Poll and one of the media darlings of the offseason. Expectations were sky-high, and multiple national analysts even picked Swinney’s Tigers to win the national title.

The Clemson hype train was derailed with a 17-10 home loss to LSU, and Clemson went on to suffer through a 7-6 campaign in 2025, the second-worst season in Swinney’s 17 full seasons as head coach. Now, fast forwarding to the present, the expectations for this year’s Clemson team are much lower.

“It’s been a little while since the vintage Clemson script was enacted,” Pate said. “The one we came to be familiar with in the mid-2010s, where they got a loaded roster and for some reason, because Nick Saban exists, people still discounted them a little bit. He does get to tap into that here. And he was very, very admittal the other day about saying, ‘We didn’t handle expectations well last year.’ Now, you should be able to handle expectations, but that’s yesterday.

“They won’t have expectations. The expectation is what’s going to happen when they lose multiple games to start the year? The expectation is not, ‘What if they don’t lose any games to start the year?’ And so he does get to tap into that, and I will tell you this… he believes they’ve got the players in the building to win. He does not believe that they have to plug 12 holes with 10 fingers. He doesn’t view it that way. Now, we get to see find out whether he’s right or not.”

The 2026 opener 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. Of course, it will also be Kiffin’s first game as LSU’s head coach after he was hired this past November to replace Brian Kelly, who was fired in October. Kiffin came to LSU after guiding Ole Miss to double-digit wins four times in six years.

LSU leads the all-time series against Clemson 4-1, with Clemson’s lone win being a dramatic 25-24 victory in the 2012 Peach Bowl.

After Clemson’s highly disappointing 2025 season, just how important does Pate think the 2026 opener vs. LSU is for Clemson and Swinney’s future?

Pate was asked if it’s the most important game he’s coached at Clemson since the Tigers’ most recent national title game appearance at the end of the 2019 season (a 42-25 loss to LSU).

“I thought the LSU game to start last season was really big, because they were more expected to win that one,” Pate said. “They’ll be a double-digit underdog in this one. Now, that gives them a chance to do the classic Clemson thing from a generation past. I’ll grant y’all that. But I thought it was way more important for them to win the one last year. Because you saw what it started. You saw the trajectory it started last year.

“Now, like I said, go back to the beginning of that last sentence – it does set up to where I would agree with you, if they win this game, what it could do for trajectory of season. It could retroactively make me look back and say, ‘Wow, that was the most important game he’s coached in, in a long time. That was the most important game they’ve won in a long time.’ I think it’s kind of a cop-out answer because the only way I can give you a ‘yes’ on this is if they win.”