Clemson’s Dabo Swinney not ‘dead,’ smiles in face of doubters

College Football Hall of Fame coach Gene Stallings, once Swinney’s mentor and role model at Alabama, is 90 years old and still alive, too, and his message is that Clemson will be back on track.

“I’d say Dabo has got many good years in him,” Stallings said when reached at his ranch in Paris, Texas, by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“He’s going to win a whole lot more games than he loses, and he’ll be playing later into the season than most all other teams.”

Swinney has made that an expectation at Clemson, setting the bar high in the pre-NIL era — before big dollars for portal transfers factored into team building.

Swinney disrupted Nick Saban’s Alabama football dynasty with two CFP championship game wins over the Crimson Tide following the 2016 and 2018 seasons.

The Tigers have made four playoff appearances since their most recent national title — a 44-16 win over Alabama with Trevor Lawrence at quarterback on Jan. 7, 2019.

Clemson has gone 1-4 in CFP games since then, failing to reach another title game and triggering doubts that perhaps Swinney has lost his touch.

Georgia Tech coach Brent Key is not among the critics.

Key, whose program snapped a nine-game losing streak to Clemson last season with a 24-21 victory, literally scoffed at the notion of writing off Swinney.

“Just his longevity, he’s been successful for many years,” said Key, whose Yellow Jackets play at Clemson on Nov. 14.

“Our win over them last season was huge, to beat what’s been the top team in the conference year over year, but now we’ve got to develop some consistency.”

He would know all about that: The Georgia Tech teams he played on went 4-0 against Clemson from 1997-2000.

Swinney’s promotion to interim head coach on Oct. 13, 2008, marked a turning point for the Tigers’ program, as it has gone 123-29 against ACC teams since.

Two of the last three years, however, Clemson has finished 4-4 in league action, and last season’s 7-6 overall mark was Clemson’s worst since the second of Swinney’s 17 teams went 6-7 in 2010.

He, understandably, has used that 6-7 season as a reference point for his program’s bid to return to prominence this season.

“In 2010 we lost five games by six points or less … had a bunch of guys drafted, had a good football team, and that team stayed together,” Swinney said. “We came back the next year and won the ACC, won 10 games.

“Fast forward, we’ve had 15 winning seasons, 13 seasons of 10-plus wins … we’ve won 11 (ACC) championships in the last 15 years, and then you have a season like last year …. ”

He noted how last year’s Clemson football team lost three games by a combined 11 points, with two losses on the final play of the game, bucking a trend

“We lead the nation, No. 1 of 138 schools over 15 years, in (record) in one-score games,” Swinney said. “Georgia or Ohio State is two or three.”

He trumpeted that Clemson is “No. 1 in (total) draft picks, we’re No. 1 in graduation (rate), we’re No. 1 in (player) retention.

“But you know what else is true? We stunk last year … we lost some games that we should have won.”

It won’t take long for Clemson fans to get a read on the promise of this season, as Swinney opens the season facing new LSU coach Lane Kiffin in a battle of Tigers at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 5 in Baton Rouge.

LSU opened the game as an 11.5-point favorite, an ominous note for Clemson considering Swinney is 1-4 in games as a double-digit underdog, most recently losing to Georgia in 2024 by a 34-3 count as a 13.5-point underdog.

“If (football) was about (what) people predicted, I would have been gone a long time ago, all right?” he said. “It’s about what you do …. we got everything we need, we don’t make excuses, we’re going to get what we earn this year.

“I don’t know who wrote that song, but the one thing about haters, when you win, it don’t matter what they say, and when you lose, it don’t matter what you say.”