Clemson’s football program has created such a high standard that even in a year where the Tigers won another ACC title, entered bowl season ranked in the top 10 and played in a New Year’s Six bowl, the season is still seen as a disappointment by some, particularly when it ended with a 31-14 loss to Tennessee in the Orange Bowl.
But how close is Clemson (11-3, 9-0 ACC in 2022) to getting back to the College Football Playoff, which it appeared in every season from 2015-20 before missing it the last two years?
ESPN analyst Greg McElroy, who served as the color commentator for the network’s broadcast of the Orange Bowl, appeared on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt and was asked what the Tigers need to focus on this offseason in order to get back to the top tier of college football where they’ve lived for a decade during a highly successful run under Dabo Swinney.
“Well, I don’t think they’re as far removed from it as they could potentially be,” McElroy said. “I think there are people that cover the sport that think if Clemson doesn’t lose to South Carolina, they would actually be in the College Football Playoff. Now, I disagree with that. I don’t think they’d be in front of a one-loss Ohio State.
“But I think the biggest thing, when you think about Clemson when they were at their best, they had unbelievable personnel at wide receiver and they had unbelievable personnel in the front seven defensively. And right now, the wide receivers, they have a few, but they’ve been really young and they’ve been a little bit inconsistent. And the passing attack, for the most part, has been fairly inconsistent as well. So, I think focusing their attention on the skill positions heading into next year. If they’re active in the portal, that’d be something that they haven’t done in the past, but maybe this is a year where they look to that. Because I don’t think the roster is that far away from competing at the highest level yet again.”
Van Pelt totally agreed.
“I just think it’s remarkable,” he said. “We go back to before Clemson won a bunch of titles, right, and people used ‘Clemsoning’ as a verb and that all changed, right. Now, it’s an expectation of if you’re not in the playoff, well what the hell went wrong. Well, sometimes you’re just as close and you’re not in the playoff for maybe it’s a year, maybe two. But I’m with you, I think that they’re close.”
Clemson, which won at least 10 games for the 12th straight season and won at least 11 games for the eighth time in 11 seasons, ended the 2022 season ranked No. 12 in the final Coaches Poll and No. 13 in the final AP Top 25.
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