One national analyst is slotting Clemson inside his preseason Top 25.
Longtime college football guru Phil Steele has released his preseason rankings of the Top 138 teams, and he ranks the Tigers No. 24 coming into the season.
Miami comes in at No. 9 and is the highest-ranked ACC team. SMU comes in at No. 22 and Florida State at No. 25, giving the ACC four teams inside the Top 25. Rival South Carolina is slotted No. 16.
Steele’s Top 10
- Notre Dame
- Oregon
- Georgia
- Ohio State
- Texas
- Indiana
- Oklahoma
- Ole Miss
- Miami
- Southern Cal
After coming into the 2025 season ranked inside the Top 5, Clemson dropped three of its first four games, finishing the campaign 7-6, marking the second-worst record of the Dabo Swinney era.
“We didn’t handle the expectations well,” Swinney said to Greg McElroy in May, “So this year, we have to handle the negativity.”
With the Tigers losing nine players from that team to the NFL Draft and having to break in a new starting quarterback under new/old offensive coordinator Chad Morris, there are certainly some questions surrounding Swinney’s team as it embarks on a new season.
A lot will be learned about this team quickly, as the Tigers once again open up against LSU, who Steele ranks No. 21. However, after losing to LSU at home to start last season, this time, Clemson will go on the road to face the Bayou Bengals in Baton Rouge.
And that is not the only early-season challenge. The Tigers travel out west to face Cal on a Friday night in Week 4, before returning home to host a Top 10 Miami team a week later.
“We’ve just got to be Clemson and be who we are,” Swinney also said to McElroy. “And if we do that, we’re going to win for a long time.”
