CLEMSON – When Clemson won its most recent ACC Championship in 2024, the Tigers finished third in the conference in total offense, third in passing, and sixth in rushing.

One year later, in the Tigers’ 7-6 finish, they ended up eighth in total offense, sixth in passing yards, and 11th in rushing yards per game. 

While some of Clemson’s offensive woes last season can certainly be credited to passing-game struggles, as nearly every related metric ticked down from the year prior, the largest offensive dip between a championship-winning year and a season just above .500 was the run game.

The Tigers went from averaging 173 rushing yards per game in 2024 to 124, a nearly 30 percent decrease. They went from 5.13 yards per rushing attempt to 3.95, a low for Clemson in the last several years. They scored three fewer rushing touchdowns, as well.

When evaluating this falloff, the first instinct could be to condemn Adam Randall, Clemson’s primary running back last season. He was a first-time running back, he was not former star Phil Mafah, etc.

But really, Randall was not the problem. In 2025, the senior notched 814 yards on 168 attempts for an average of 4.85 yards per carry. Mafah finished his final year with 1,115 rushing yards on a 5.16 average per play. While his stats look better, Mafah was also working with nearly 50 more attempts across the season.

Randall finished fifth in the ACC in yards per carry among players with 150 or more attempts, while Mafah finished eighth one year earlier. Randall also had 10 touchdowns to Mafah’s eight.

So, if Randall, specifically, was not the problem, what was?

The answer is two-fold — abandoning the run and quarterback mobility.

Take a look at the season-opening LSU game from last year. Through three quarters, Randall had just started to get going. He broke a tackle for seven yards in the second quarter and scored the lone Tigers touchdown early. 

Quarterback Cade Klubnik, on the other hand, ran for 20 yards on four carries in the first three quarters. When LSU’s defense shutdown his receivers down the field, the veteran quarterback took what he was giving him and took off running.

But in the fourth quarter, no Clemson player–not Klubnik, Randall, or anyone else–attempted to run the ball. As a result, the Tigers were limited to short passes and ended up losing 17-10 after holding a halftime lead.

That is a small look at how the season went. Clemson continued to abandon the run game in key moments or in the second half throughout the year, and Klubnik, who dealt with a nagging ankle injury for much of the season, went from 463 rushing yards and seven rushing touchdowns in 2024 to 94 rushing yards and four touchdowns one year later.

In the offseason, head coach Dabo Swinney made a change to correct some of these wrongs by bringing back Chad Morris to run his offense. During his first stint at Clemson, Morris leaned on the running game to setup his deep passing game, as his offense produced back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons for Andre Ellington in 2011 and ’12 and then another for Roderick McDowell in 2013.

Even in 2014, with a brand new backfield, then freshman Wayne Gallman emerged as a top level running back. He ran for 571 yards and three TDs in the Tigers’ last six games of the season. After becoming the regular starter by mid-season, Gallman averaged 95.2 yards per game and 5.1 yards per carry.

In his introductory press conference, and in every media gathering since, Morris was adamant about his desire to run the football, stating that offenses have to stem from the run game to be successful.

The Tigers also went into the transfer portal and got running back Chris Johnson Jr., a former SMU and Miami running back who ranks among the fastest players in college football and burned Clemson a year ago in SMU’s win at Death Valley. With Johnson, rising sophomore Gideon Davidson is also primed to take over, as the two are competing to be the primary running back in Morris’ offense.

A casual fan watching Clemson last year saw that the rushing offense was a problem. Statistics reveal it may have been even worse than it appeared. But with Morris, Johnson and a new outlook, the Tigers are hoping to return to being a primary rushing power in the ACC.