What will it take for Dabo Swinney’s Clemson team to bounce back from last year’s disappointment and have a successful season in 2026?

ESPN college football analyst Greg McElroy gave his thoughts on that very topic during an appearance on ESPN’s Get Up show.

McElroy says it all starts at the quarterback position, where redshirt junior Christopher Vizzina and true freshman Tait Reynolds are competing to replace three-year starter Cade Klubnik as the Tigers’ starting signal-caller.

Vizzina will still be at the top of the quarterback depth chart when fall camp gets underway, while Reynolds heads into fall camp as Clemson’s No. 2 QB. Vizzina is in what Swinney calls the pole position when it comes to the quarterback race, but Reynolds really pushed Vizzina in the spring and has continued to do so through summer workouts.

“First of all, they need good quarterback play,” McElroy said. “Is it gonna be Chris Vizzina? Sounds like he’s stepping in. Look, Cade Klubnik, when things were going good, he was great. When things weren’t going good, it was a rollercoaster. So, they need stable quarterback play.”

McElroy added that the Tigers “gotta be able to run the football” this season as well, pointing to the fact Clemson’s leading rushing last year was a wide receiver-turned-running back in Adam Randall with 814 yards.

With Randall now off to the NFL, sophomore Gideon Davidson is the presumed starting running back, though the former consensus top-100 prospect isn’t the only talented back on the roster. The Tigers signed Chris Johnson Jr. out of the transfer portal, and seeing as he’s one of the fastest running backs in the country, he adds elite-level speed to that room.

“Last year, their top running back at one point was a converted wide receiver that was in his fifth year,” McElroy said. “It’s not like they had a dude at running back, and they haven’t had one since Will Shipley. Phil Mafah was a good one, but they need more consistent play at running back and need to be more balanced.”

McElroy says health at wide receiver and overall improvement/consistency in the defensive front seven will also be key to Clemson’s success this season.

“They need their receivers to stay healthy, which hasn’t happened the last few years,” McElroy said. “And last year, with two bona fide dudes along the defensive line [Peter Woods and T.J. Parker], that group was really underwhelming. Now they’re gonna need those guys to take a step collectively in the front seven, because I just think they were too inconsistent last year.”

Clemson was ranked No. 4 in the AP preseason poll last year, only to finish the season 7-6, the second-worst record in Swinney’s full 17 seasons as the Tigers’ head coach. After losing at home to LSU in Week 1, Clemson started 1-3 and then 3-5.

McElroy believes Clemson’s 2026 season will reveal a lot about Swinney’s culture.

“When they got punched – here’s the thing about Clemson – like, Clemson’s secret sauce is culture. That is what they are. That’s what Dabo believes in,” McElroy said. “And last year, in a year that was supposed to be their breakthrough – hey, we were building towards this – they get punched in the mouth Week 1, and they don’t recover and they stumble out of the gates and look awful in the first six, seven games of the season.

“Well, culture is supposed to be able to absorb that punch and start punching back. They didn’t. So now I think making sure that culture is not a liability moving forward, making sure that culture is still their secret sauce, and allowing them to weather the storm, which they couldn’t do last year, which led to a very disappointing start to the season.”