One scholarship player who didn’t travel with Clemson for Saturday’s game at North Carolina is junior linebacker Jamal Anderson.

Following the Tigers’ 38-10 win over the Tar Heels, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney explained why Anderson wasn’t on the travel roster and didn’t make the trip to Chapel Hill.

Swinney said it was a coach’s decision and that the Tigers are planning to redshirt him in order to give him a couple more years.

“We’re going to try to hold him,” Swinney said. “He’s a guy I met with him this spring, and we actually talked about – we hardly played him his freshman year, at all. We really kind of wasted a year, honestly. We talked this spring about, with him, that if it worked out, we would consider redshirting him. And where we were and where they feel like the linebackers are, we felt like we could try to hold him. So, that’s what we made the decision to do with him.”

Anderson played in each of Clemson’s first four games this season, logging 10 snaps in the season opener vs. LSU before starting the Troy game and playing 25 snaps. He then played 12 snaps at Georgia Tech and just one snap vs. Syracuse.

The 6-foot-3, 225-pounder recorded three tackles (one for loss) vs. LSU, added another three tackles vs. Troy, was credited with a tackle for loss at Georgia Tech, and made one tackle vs. Syracuse.

An NFL legacy as the son of former NFL running back Jamal Anderson, the younger Anderson entered this season credited with 15 tackles (one for loss), one sack, a blocked punt and 123 defensive snaps over 27 career games (one start) from 2023-24.

A former four-star prospect in the 2023 recruiting class from Mill Creek High School in Georgia, Anderson was ranked as the No. 128 overall player in the nation by ESPN.com, which also listed him as the No. 8 player in Georgia and the 12th-best outside linebacker in the nation.