The 2025 college football season is a ways away from kicking off, but ESPN senior writer Andrea Adelson doesn’t need to wait to pick the ACC preseason favorite.

Adelson believes Clemson is once again the team to beat, coming off a 2024 campaign in which the Tigers claimed their eighth ACC Championship in the past 10 seasons, and were one of two ACC teams to make the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff, along with ACC runner-up SMU.

“To be able to get two teams in, in year one, and one of them being your standard bearer in Clemson, when maybe a lot of people didn’t think they’d have that chance to make it in, or thought after the South Carolina loss, ‘Clemson is done’ — the fact that they were able to do that and play a competitive game (in the CFP First Round vs. Texas) through the fourth quarter, especially as a springboard for potentially them as a preseason pick,” Adelson said during a recent appearance on the CFB Nation podcast.

“I think they will be the preseason pick — I’m ready to say that now in February — I think they will be the preseason pick in the ACC in 2025. To have that experience with guys who hadn’t been in the playoff, now knowing what it takes with a veteran group returning, I think is big for the Clemson, it’s big for the ACC.”

The Sporting News put together a composite Way-Too-Early Top 25 list for the 2025 season comprised of various outlets, and Clemson is the highest-ranked ACC team at No. 7.

The Tigers will open the 2025 season against LSU, the No. 8 team in that composite preseason Top 25. Alabama and Tennessee round out the top 10, while Texas, Ohio State, Penn State, Georgia, Notre Dame and Oregon are ranked ahead of Clemson.

A bunch of the teams in the top 10 will have new quarterbacks next season, and some will have QB battles this spring.

Clemson, of course, is not one of those teams. The Tigers return star quarterback Cade Klubnik after his career year as a junior this past season, and Adelson believes that’s a big advantage for Clemson, not having to go through a QB change or competition like a lot of other teams entering the 2025 season.

“I think it’s huge for them, especially when you consider the performance of Cade Klubnik last year,” Adelson said. “I don’t think he got enough credit for the type of improvement and consistency he showed game to game. That was his best season by far. It was the defense, quite frankly, that let them down for the majority of the season in those losses. When you look at just a terrible performance against Louisville at home, the defense gave up 200-something rushing yards. Obviously the defense was a problem against South Carolina, not being able to hold on to that lead at the end, and then of course what we saw against Texas.

“So you understand why Dabo Swinney made the decision to make a change at defensive coordinator. Because you saw the strides the offense made with Cade Klubnik this past season, and you know you have something to build on. You’re basically returning your entire core of wide receivers. You’re returning a strong offensive line. Phil Mafah might be gone, but you feel good about who you have in your backfield. Now you’ve finally got the offense back to a place where they can score points like we saw under Trevor Lawrence. Haven’t quite gotten to that point until this past season.”

In Adelson’s opinion, that is what puts Clemson “in the driver’s seat in the ACC” heading into next season.

“Because you look at their offense and who they have coming back and the strides that they made, and finally being in sync with Garrett Riley and what he wants to do, and Cade being comfortable in that system,” she said. “You make a change at defensive coordinator. You’re bringing some really good players back to that defense, and it just feels like you’ve got to capitalize right now if you’re Clemson, and a lot of that is because of Cade Klubnik coming back.”