ESPN analyst Louis Riddick was on the call for Clemson’s game against North Carolina last Saturday at Memorial Stadium.

The Tigers were on the precipice of potentially getting blown out, before eventually overcoming a 17-3 first-half deficit and scoring 13 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to end the game with a 28-20 victory over Bill Belichick’s squad.

After witnessing the fierce rally in person, Riddick – who played defensive back for Belichick on the Cleveland Browns from 1993-95 — believes the comeback win over the Tar Heels could end up being a major turning point for Dabo Swinney’s team and its season.

“To me, it’s one of those things that will turn around Clemson’s season,” Riddick said on the Dan Patrick Show.

“I’m not saying Clemson is going to be a player in the national title picture, not at all,” Riddick added. “But I think it was definitely one of those situations where they lose that game by two, three touchdowns, which is what it looked like was on the way to happening — that could have been a huge turning point for that university as well. Because who knows, there may have been even more and more cries for Dabo to get up out of there. Even though, when you look at his record, he doesn’t have to take a backseat to anybody.”

Riddick noted that prior to the incredible turnaround, the Tigers (2-1, 1-0 ACC) were heading down a path that might have forced them to completely “reevaluate their entire operation” after what would’ve otherwise been a dismal 1-2 start to the year.

Instead, the strong finish following a 2.5-hour weather delay and the second-half resilience that Swinney’s team showed serves as positive momentum to right the ship.

“The team was rolling,” Riddick said of North Carolina early in the game. “I thought after the first two drives of that football game, I thought, ‘They’re going to blow Clemson out of here. They’re going to roll them right out of the stadium.’ Because the way the running game was going, the way Clemson’s offense wasn’t going, the way Bill’s defense was playing — I mean, it really seemed like it was going to be one of these situations where Clemson was going to really have to reevaluate their entire operation if it was going to continue down this road, based upon on how they had looked the first two weeks.

“And then even before the game was stopped, with the weather delay, North Carolina had the ball second-and-goal to go in the fourth quarter with about eight minutes to go, and I’m thinking if they put the ball in here, the game is over. Stop for two and a half hours, come back out, they can’t score. They come back out, Clemson stops them, and then all of a sudden Clemson’s offense really gets going. And the next thing you know, North Carolina can’t stop anybody. So that momentum just kind of killed everything. It killed everything for them. They made a bunch of costly mistakes. The quarterback couldn’t really get the ball down the field with any accuracy, and they lose the game.”

Clemson’s comeback was certainly sparked in part by Tait Reynolds settling in and hitting his stride in the second half of his first career start, and Riddick believes the talented true freshman quarterback has the potential to be the poster boy of a Clemson turnaround.

“I put it like this –they have a freshman quarterback Tait Reynolds now who really is a guy who seems to be lifting the hopes of not just the players on the field with his ability to run the football, play with power, play with force, he threw the football better as the game went on and just really settled in — but he’s kind of lifting the spirits of the football building. The fan base overall,” Riddick said.

“Because he just has that kind of aura about him. He’s young. He’s big. He’s strong. He kind of really embodies what everybody looks for in that kind of leader. And I think because of how they played coming out in the second half and then once the stoppage was over, it’s the kind of thing — I’ve been in those situations — the kind of thing that can catapult a football team and really inspire them.”