Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney recently joined SportsCenter to discuss several different topics, including the Tigers’ quarterback battle between redshirt junior Christopher Vizzina and true freshman Tait Reynolds.

Vizzina remains in what Swinney calls the pole position when it comes to Clemson’s quarterback race, and he will still be at the top of the quarterback depth chart when fall camp gets underway. Reynolds really pushed Vizzina in the spring and has continued to do so through summer workouts, and Reynolds will get his shot during fall camp to push for the starting job.

Swinney was asked what Vizzina and Reynolds have shown him so far.

“The quarterbacks have competed hard,” Swinney said. “Vizzina went into spring with the pole position, as we like to say, and he’s our most experienced guy. But we don’t have a ton of experience there. I think we like the talent in our room, and we like the competition in the room. Tait Reynolds came out of spring as our second guy, and now those two guys have competed all summer, and that’ll carry over into camp.

“But man, CV has done a great job to this point in showing that, hey, he deserves to be the guy going into camp. And Tait’s done a great job to show that hey, he ain’t going away. He’s gonna continue to compete. So we’ve got great competition, and we’ve got a lot of playmakers that are poised to make plays for whoever’s under center for us.”

After going into last season as a top-four team nationally, the Tigers sputtered to a 1-3 start and then were 3-5 through eight games, prior to winning their next three games to become bowl eligible for a 27th consecutive season.

Overall, Clemson finished the 2025 regular season on a four-game winning streak, before losing 22-10 to Penn State in the Pinstripe Bowl. On SportsCenter, Swinney was asked how his program can carry that momentum from the end of the regular season last year over into this season.

Swinney says Clemson’s focus is about “starting over” this season and improving as a team.

“I don’t think you get to carry anything over. I think you’ve got to start over,” Swinney said. “You don’t get to carry the touchdowns over. You don’t have to carry the bad stuff over. I just think the biggest thing is you just carry the lessons and you learn and you grow and then you attack the areas that you need to improve in. So, that’s been our focus, is just going to work on this new team, and we’re excited to get back on the field. We’ve been going since January, and this is just the next step for us, now getting back to practice, getting into camp, and getting ready to actually play a game.”

Swinney also discussed lessons learned from last year’s 7-6 campaign, why he liked Chad Morris for the offensive coordinator job, what prompted the Tigers to add a program-record 17 players from the transfer portal this offseason, and the 2026 season opener at LSU.

You can check out Swinney’s full SportsCenter appearance below: