2026 Clemson Football Spring Game Observations
What My Own Eyes Took in on March 28 Greetings STS! Yours truly had to make a trip to Clemson for some other reasons but I figured since I was there, I might as well take in the 2026 Spring Game and try to get a bit of a read on things for next season. It is a major pivot point in the Dabo Swinney era as we all know, and the pressure to produce is approaching what Swinney was facing the last time Chad Morris was brought in to lead the offense.
The program isn’t title or bust, but barely squeaking into a bowl game and looking up at teams like Duke and Virginia in the standings is not going to fly for very long. Clemson and its fans have invested and continue to invest way too much for a 7 to 8 win football program. Everyone knows this, especially Coach Swinney, so let’s get to what happened in the game.
Before I start, the disclaimer is I’m not a football coach by trade though I have coached it in my career and am reasonably knowledgeable about things. Not being able to watch all 22 tape limits what you can really assess from any live action. This is not to proclaim anything as fixed or broken, but we all could see what the big issues were that led to last year’s major disappointments.
I’ll comment on those as I go through the post. 2025 Problems: Offensive execution. Clemson’s issues on offense have been widely noted for several years now since Trevor Lawrence departed as the #1 overall draft pick in 2021.
My biggest gripes with the system Garrett Riley brought in tied to how often we had to hear about 9 or 10 of the 11 doing their job and 1 or 2 not that led to a play not working. Riley had three springs as OC and I felt the offense was largely a mess in all three of those, especially when Cade Klubnik and the presumed upper end guys were on the field. Some of this can be caused if you go split squad format and mix depth chart guys (especially on the OL).
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