Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney would be thrilled to see true freshman quarterback Chris Denson get some action on the field Saturday against Furman at Memorial Stadium, if the Tigers take care of business and do what they’re supposed to do against the Paladins.

“I’d love to see Chris get to play some,” Swinney said during his weekly radio show Monday night. “That’d be awesome.”

After enrolling early at Clemson in January, Denson – an electric dual-threat quarterback from the Sunshine State – has appeared in one game this season. The 6-foot-2, 195-pounder made his college debut on a 2-yard keeper vs. SMU on Oct. 18.

Denson was ranked among the top 25 dual-threat quarterbacks in the country for the 2025 recruiting class by Rivals (No. 14) and ESPN (No. 25).

A two-year starter for Plant City (Fla.) High School, Denson completed 63.6 percent of his career passes for 4,813 yards and 55 touchdowns with just 13 interceptions. He added 1,940 career rushing yards on 207 carries (9.4-yard average) and collected 16 rushing touchdowns with eight 100-yard rushing games over his career.

As a senior in 2024, Denson completed 142-of-217 passes for 2,334 yards and threw 28 touchdown passes with only three interceptions, while rushing for 1,159 yards and 12 more scores on 113 carries (10.3-yard average).

“He’s a guy that there’s just still some unknown with him,” Swinney said. “He’s an elite athlete – I mean, elite, elite, elite. Can really, really run. You’ve got guys that can run, and then you’ve got guys like Denson. He is unbelievably explosive. He’s still developing as a quarterback. There’s still some growth there that’s got to happen. But we’re seeing lots of improvement in practice – physically, and just developmentally, as far as throwing the ball.”

Swinney credited assistant quarterbacks coach Tajh Boyd for the job he’s done in working with Denson.

“Tajh has done a great job with him. He’s kind of been Tajh’s personal project,” Swinney said. “Because he just really had a lot of development to do, as a thrower, all the things and just his mechanics and lot of stuff. But he’s made a ton of improvement, and so it would be great if we could get him in the game and just see some live work from him and see where he’s at.”

Though Denson has seen very little game action this season – only one snap in the SMU game — he has scrimmaged a lot in practice, according to Swinney. And when he scrimmages, the Tigers typically make him “live” and let him be tackled, that way he can use his legs.

“His strength is being live,” Swinney said. “Usually when we scrimmage with him, we make him live, because I hate to take a big part of his game away, and it’s also good for the defense. And we’ve scrimmaged him a lot over these last five weeks. We’ve done a lot of scrimmage work on Tuesdays. … Guys that aren’t playing a ton on Saturdays, we’re making sure they’re playing at least once a week, just like our team – just some live football.”

Swinney reiterated that he hopes to get Denson into Saturday’s game vs. Furman (4:30 p.m., The CW) so Clemson could gain a better understanding of where he’s at in his development.

“I’ve seen some real growth in him. So, I would love to be able to, if it worked out, to where he could have an opportunity to play some. That would be great,” Swinney said. “Because I just think it gives you one more measuring stick on where he is and where we’ve got to get him to.”