CLEMSON – Clemson’s 2025 roster held nearly one fourth of the Tigers’ Top-100 high school recruits since 2000.

With 21 former four and five star players, last year’s squad was loaded with some of the highest-ranked high school talent in head coach Dabo Swinney’s tenure. Now, with 11 of those players not returning for the 2026 year, the conversation around Clemson’s ability looks different this offseason.

“Last year, outside we were great and we’re going to win the national championship,” Swinney told college football analyst Greg McElroy in an interview recently, outlining media expectations. “And, you know, we didn’t get that done. And this year it’s we stink and nobody’s any good and we don’t have any players. And neither one of those were true.”

Ahead of the 2025 year, Clemson was projected as a preseason Top-10 team by all major media outlets, largely based on the retention of former highly-touted recruits like quarterback Cade Klubnik, offensive lineman Blake Miller, and defenders Peter Woods and T.J. Parker.

Despite the veteran talents of over 15 upperclassmen starters, however, Clemson finished 7-6, its worst finish since Swinney’s second full season in 2010. Now, with nine players departed in the NFL Draft and others exhausting their eligibility, the Tigers will look to bounce back without the majority of their former blue chip recruits.

“So just like in 2010 when we came off that six-win season, some changes kind of reset some things,” Swinney said. “That’s what this offseason’s been like. And I’ve had fun with it. I’ve enjoyed it. I like our personnel. Bunch of nobodies. Just a bunch of nobodies, man, trying to be somebody and try to take Clemson back to the top. And we’re gonna do it. We’ll get there. I don’t know if it’ll be this year or not, but we’ll be there again.”

In response to Swinney’s grinning quips about his roster, McElroy joked that many teams across the country would love to house the “nobodies” that Swinney referred to, as the Tigers will return former Butkus Award-winning linebacker Sammy Brown, and starting receivers Bryant Wesco Jr. and T.J. Moore, among others.

While the tongue-in-cheek tactic of highlighting the potential dropoff talent may sound harsh, Clemson’s smiling skipper was actually drawing on former success with once-underrated players, not disparaging his current roster.

In almost two decades, Swinney has dominated with top talent at times, signing No. 1 overall recruit Trevor Lawrence in 2018 and No. 2 player Dexter Lawrence in 2016. In other, earlier years, however, he succeeded with the 27th and 36th-ranked classes in the country.

“You got to have enough and we have of course, we’ve always had enough,” Swinney said of recruiting classes. “But It’s never been the same. We’ve never had the same as Alabama or Georgia or LSU or Ohio State. We’ve never had the same but we’ve won and we’ve won. Look at my recruiting classes, they’ve been like eight to 25 since I’ve been a head coach. I think the highest ranked recruiting class I had was my worst recruiting class. But we’ve won.”

In Swinney’s 18 years at Clemson, the Tigers high school recruiting classes have ranked in the nation’s top-10 seven times, most recently in each year between 2018 and 2022. Throughout those years, Clemson won four of Swinney’s nine ACC Championships and reached the College Football Playoff three times. 

However, Swinney and the Tigers also won five other conference championships and made multiple College Football Playoff appearances following “down” recruiting cycles. The head coach’s first ACC Championship came in 2011, after two high school classes ranked outside the Top-25 in the nation by 247.com 

“It’s not about how many five stars they got,” Swinney said. “If we met at the middle of the field with some of these teams that we’ve played over the almost two decades I’ve been here as the head coach, we would have lost every time if (we) would have looked at their roster and looked at our roster and said, ‘Oh man, you got this many five stars,’ or ‘Oh, y’all’s budget is this.’

“But it’s not about that,” he added. “It’s about the players playing the game and it’s belief, and it’s toughness, and it’s synergy, and it’s alignment.”

While the Tigers will still boast four former five-star recruits, along with several other highly-ranked picks and players that have developed into stars since high school, Swinney and his staff may be back to the original philosophy of winning more with less this season.

Whatever the case, the Tigers still have just over three months to lock down their starters, whether they are former high school standouts or developmental projects, before Clemson will open its season against LSU on Sept. 5 at Tiger Stadium.