Clemson’s Dabo Swinney has dropped precipitously in various college football head coach rankings entering the 2026 season, in large part due to a 7-6 season in 2025 (the second-worst record in Swinney’s tenure) and only one College Football Playoff appearance since 2020.
Despite his long track record of success as a two-time national championship coach, and the nine ACC titles and seven CFP appearances on his resume, Swinney – Clemson’s all-time winningest coach and the winningest coach in ACC history – is ranked No. 10 nationally among head coaches by Sporting News (down seven spots from last year) and No. 11 nationally by 10 CBS Sports panelists (down eight spots from last year), to name a couple of examples. Swinney was ranked as high as No. 5 by one of those CBS Sports panelists, but another had him all the way down at No. 28.
On3’s Andy Staples recently ranked Swinney as not the third-best head coach in the country, but the third-best head coach in the ACC alone, behind Miami’s Mario Cristobal and Virginia Tech’s James Franklin.
ESPN play-by-play voice and former 105.5 The Roar personality Roy Philpott thinks Swinney’s drastic decline in rankings is laughable.
“I’ve seen those lists, and I have audibly laughed out loud. That is egregious,” Philpott said during an appearance with fellow Clemson alums Kelly Gramlich and Eric Mac Lain on the Gramlich & Mac Lain show.
Philpott gave his big-picture thoughts on the 56-year-old Swinney, who is entering his 19th season (and 18th full season) as Clemson’s head coach in 2026 and has a 187-53 head coaching record.
Philpott believes we’re seeing Swinney — who has more national championship game appearances (four) than any other active coach and is one of only two active coaches with multiple national titles – “evolve a little bit” as college football’s landscape continues to change.
“I’ve always told people, and every time I’m around somebody that understands my background, I have a million Dabo Swinney stories of course. But I’ve always told people, he’s the smartest person I’ve ever been around – like, just in terms of coaches, people in general,” Philpott said. “I feel like he’s got a plan for everything, and somewhere in his office or in his home or somewhere in a vault locked up, he’s got a notebook that has a plan, that has a strategy for when this happens, and I think he’s always been that way. He’s always been supremely prepared. And I think he’s always been a coach that makes very tough decisions, and can adapt. I think that’s an underrated element of what he brings to the table.
“But you don’t get to his position, you don’t win two national championships, you don’t play for two more, you don’t go to six straight playoffs unless you’re highly intelligent, unless you understand the game, you understand human beings, you understand personalities and how to manage a large organization. He checks all those boxes better than any coach I’ve ever been around. So, I think we’re seeing him evolve a little bit. Trying to go back to the future with Chad Morris is interesting. I think it’s got a chance to be special. I think it’s got a chance to work out quite well. What he’s done in the portal – in adding, what, 10 new players, a majority on defense, I understand that – is a step I think in his evolution now at Clemson.”
Perhaps the most important thing, Philpott says, is Swinney has an especially big chip on his shoulder heading into the upcoming season – and Philpott thinks that’s good news for the Clemson program.
“Hearing him talk, maybe most importantly, and reminding folks – you get a chippy Dabo Swinney this time of year,” Philpott said. “Because I think he’s been sent those lists, and he hears the narratives, right. So, all of that, to me, if I’m a Clemson fan, that’s something I love. Because that’s typically when this program is at its best, and I think typically that’s when we’re all at our best, when we have something to prove and we’re doubted. For me, that’s Clemson. That’s kind of been its identity as long as I can remember – right or wrong, when they feel that way, when that staff and that team feels that way, that’s when they tend to be at their absolute best. And I think that’s where it is right now, coming off a 7-6 with nine draft picks [in the 2026 NFL Draft].”
With that roster full of NFL talent, Clemson was ranked No. 4 in the AP Poll going into the 2025 season and was widely expected to contend for a national title, only to start 1-3 and quickly drop out of the ACC title race and CFP conversation.
Philpott reiterated that Swinney and the Tigers have historically been at their best, when their backs are against the wall like they are right now after last year’s disappointment. But Swinney’s “chippiness” this year is on a different level, according to Philpott.
“So, Dabo is evolving, and I think he is at his best when he is dealt a hand of adversity, not only on the field, but off,” Philpott said. “That is what has made him who he is. So, that’s where he is right now. Every other time in his life, whenever he’s been dealt that kind of hand is when he overachieves, when his program has overachieved, when he as a person, as an assistant coach, as a walk-on wide receiver at Alabama, and his program backed in – they overachieve, and it’s when they’re at their best. So, that would be the one thing that would have me the most excited about what’s to come in the next year or two under his watch, is he’s been backed into this corner again, painted into a corner. He’s smart enough, and he’s smarter than all of us, to figure out a way to get out of it and to make it work again.
“So, what that next step is for him, I’m curious to see. But I think he’s taken a massive step forward, just since last offseason, with the coaching changes, with the portal, and just with that overall level of chippiness. I hear the edge and the tone that I’ve heard at times, even in this recent run and when things haven’t gone well. But this one, it feels and sounds different to me.”