TheAthletic’s college football staff released bold predictions for the 2026 season, and one staffer went out on a limb when it comes to the highly anticipated season opener between Clemson and LSU.

Jill Thaw predicted that the ACC’s Tigers will pull off a major upset against the SEC’s Tigers in Baton Rouge.

Clemson enters the Sept. 5 matchup as a 10.5-point underdog. The contest, of course, will mark Lane Kiffin’s LSU head coaching debut.

Thaw predicts that, despite Clemson’s huge opening win, neither program will ultimately make the 12-team College Football Playoff.

“Clemson will spoil Kiffin’s LSU debut,” Thaw wrote. “Both teams end up missing the Playoff, and this game is the lightning rod for both.”

Thaw’s bold prediction extends beyond just Week 1, adding that there will be “fallout” from Clemson’s upset win over LSU.

“Multiple Power 4 conferences scratch big-time nonconference matchups to avoid this happening to them, and the CFP expands to at least 24 in response,” Thaw wrote. “The losers, of course, are CFB fans.”

Thaw’s take differs from The Athletic’s SEC game-by-game predictions, which has an LSU victory over Clemson as one of the wins that will propel Kiffin to a 10-2 debut season. The only projected losses for Kiffin’s squad are on the road at Ole Miss and Tennessee.

The Athletic did concede that “there’s a wide range of potential records” for the Bayou Bengals in Year 1 of the Kiffin era.

“LSU could be good right away with Lane Kiffin, Sam Leavitt and the other immediate additions … or the Tigers could be a seven-win team again, if you add Texas A&M, Alabama and Texas to the two road losses,” The Athletic’s Seth Emerson wrote.

As for Clemson, The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel isn’t optimistic about Dabo Swinney’s team entering the upcoming season.

Mandel, editor-in-chief of The Athletic’s college football coverage, predicted that Swinney “endures another mediocre year,” with Clemson finishing the 2026 regular season at 6-6 overall and 4-4 in ACC play, tying for ninth place in the conference standings.

“Once a program reaches the heights Clemson did from 2015-2020, people just kind of assume they’re ‘still talented.’ Well, the Tigers had nine draft picks last season and went 7-6. They’ve gone 4-4 in conference play two of the past three seasons. Expect more of the same,” Mandel wrote.

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.

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.

Clemson and LSU faced one another at neutral sites in postseason play four times before the two sets of Tigers met in Clemson in the 2025 season opener for their first regular season, on-campus meeting in series history – a 17-10 LSU win.