A former Clemson standout gave his very candid take on the state of the Clemson football program right now, in the aftermath of the worst loss of Dabo Swinney’s career as a head coach.

On the Gramlich & Mac Lain podcast, former Clemson first-team All-ACC offensive lineman and current ACC Network analyst Eric Mac Lain discussed what happened in Baton Rouge on Saturday night and diagnosed various issues with Clemson after LSU thoroughly throttled Swinney’s team to the tune of a 51-10 shellacking.

Mac Lain noted Clemson looked completely “overwhelmed” at the lines of scrimmage, and Clemson’s lack of team speed and explosiveness compared to LSU was “night and day different.”

“One thing that was super evident right after that first drive was just these lines of scrimmage are overwhelmed very quickly,” Mac Lain said. “And it wasn’t like they were sending the house. It wasn’t like it was exotic blitz after exotic blitz. It was a lot of man coverage, one high safety. Pretty much trying to bring five when you can, and maybe an additional blitz here and there. But they disguised it well. They have super-freak athletes.

“In the game, the most concerning piece was the lack of team speed from Clemson, and just how slow and lack of explosive they looked compared to LSU. It was night and day different. Really, the only — maybe Georgia a couple years ago — I don’t maybe remember quite feeling that way. What I’m saying is, when we played Duke – that was the same feelings I had in ’23. Duke looked so much faster. Everything they did. It was just like, my gosh, this is crazy. It felt like that a lot.

“And then the second thing was the overwhelmed line of scrimmage. Maybe that should be the first thing, because both of them, guys just getting blocked, guys not being able to block — it was a real, real concern that eventually led to the game being how it was.”

Mac Lain highlighted the lopsided nature of the game, pointing out that LSU racked up 38 first downs, while the mere eight first downs Clemson was able to muster came mostly late in the game after LSU called off the dogs.  

“Like, 38 first downs is crazy. And the eight [Clemson first downs], a lot of them came when the walk-ons were in for LSU. The stats are a little skewed, which is crazy to think that,” Mac Lain said.

Mac Lain mentioned that former teammates were texting him during the game in disbelief.

“I’m getting texts from every teammate you can ever imagine during the game, and it’s just like, ‘Man, this doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to look like,’” he said.

Mac Lain called the overall matchup “devastating” and pointed toward deeper concerns regarding talent and personnel evaluation.

“The biggest thing for me from a program standpoint … I think Clemson has a little bit of an evaluation issue,” he said. “I think Clemson thinks that what they have is significantly better than what it is. And OK, now if you don’t agree with that, then you can’t develop them. Which kinda goes back to the same thing. So, there’s an issue here. Whether that’s from the top, whether that’s at the assistants, whether that’s in the weight room — whatever it is, there is an issue with this eval here and this getting better.

“When you sit here and the entire Clemson family, every single piece of that that you can think of included is thinking we probably need some pieces on the offensive line, need some pieces on the defensive line, we probably need a quarterback, at bare minimum, that’s played an away game. Doesn’t have to be a $7 million quarterback. Go get the guy from Troy. Go get the guy from Furman. Go get the guy from Elon. Somebody that has taken a snap not in their home uniform, home facility — at a minimum. And the answer is, ‘Nah, we’re good. We like what we have.’ That, to me, is a weird, weird spot. And it’s been a weird spot, but now that we’ve seen it, it’s heightened significantly. And it’s exacerbated now, because we can see it. It’s not closed practices. It’s not hearsay of one practice. It’s not an opinion of what I think potentially they can do.

“It’s reaction to what we saw, and what we saw was the worst game in coach Dabo Swinney’s career. The biggest blowout. The biggest separator of ‘You don’t even belong on this field,’ to be quite honest, with this team. And that, to me, is devastating. That, to me, is very frustrating.”