South Carolina fans could be witnessing beginning of the end for Dabo Swinney, Clemson

As the college football world turns the page from Week 1 into Week 2, there is one looming question that will hang over the entire season. And that is: Will Clemson finally move on from head coach Dabo Swinney? The Tigers head coach has won two national championships and countless ACC and bowl game titles and is the school's winningest coach. But how far Swinney's program has fallen was on clear display during LSU's rout of Clemson, 51-10. Although LSU entered as 10-point favorites, the game felt like you were watching Lane Kiffin go up against an FCS team. Clemson finished the night with eight first downs—just as many scoring drives LSU had. Clemson also had more penalty yards (41) than it had rushing yards, and Clemson quarterback Chris Vizzina was so unproductive he finished with just 83 passing yards. It was an utter and complete shellacking. But numbers aside, there is one clip of a Clemson starting offensive lineman that perfectly encapsulates just how bad things have gotten for Swinney. Watch as the lineman looks completely lost, allowing the LSU defender to come loose and blow up the play: This is awful. pic.twitter.com/7kcPCy8319 — #ClemsonNFL (@ClemsonPros) September 6, 2026 Initially after the game on Saturday night, Swinney appeared to understand how bad things looked, admitting that his team got their "a**'s kicked": "We didn't do football stuff well enough," Swinney said via ESPN . "I'm not sitting around judging other people on what their resources are or what they can do. It is what it is. It's our job to be the best we can be and we were not that tonight with what we have. It's my job to get us better." South Carolina freshman TE Cadem Ramsey arrested early Monday morning Swinney has no one to blame but himself. For years, the Clemson head coach refused to adapt to two of the sport's biggest changes, with NIL and the transfer portal. He has since partially reneged on both, as Clemson did use the transfer portal the most under Swinney this offseason. But at quarterback, Swinney has never signed a starting signal-caller from the portal, instead opting to stick with the ones he has recruited. Vizzina was pulled in the second half in favor of freshman Tait Reynolds, who didn't do much better. He finished going four-of-six passing for 22 yards. Speaking of the offense. Swinney also has not made significant changes to how he has hired assistants either. Swinney consistently stuck with elevating assistant coaches from within, until he hired Garrett Riley in 2023. Although the hire was perceived to be a home-run, the best the unit did was scoring 34 points a game during the Tigers' first-round CFP exit. Instead of hiring an innovative and respective offensive coordinator—like Shane Beamer did with Kendal Briles—he hired Chad Morris instead. Morris was Clemson's OC from 2011-2014, but as ESPN's Bill Connelly points out , the last time Morris was associated with a quality offense was in 2018. Even a couple of days after the loss, Swinney is desperately trying to exude confidence in his team: 'I just think it's a terrible mindset to have," Swinney said via Jackson Castellano of The Post and Courier. "We're not going to go undefeated every year. How many times has that happened in the history of 130 years? And in today's college football, there's not going to be many teams that, somewhere, don't have a loss or have a bad day.'. 'We work all year for 12 days, and that's a bad day. And so you pick yourself up and you get back in the fight and you learn. Let's go get better next week.' The good news for Clemson is that the Tigers should bounce back in Week 2, taking on Georgia Southern at home. From there, Clemson gets North Carolina at home on Sept. 19, followed with a road trip to play Cal on a Friday night. Clemson has ACC games against Miami, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Syracuse, Georgia Tech and Duke before getting the Gamecocks at home. The best case scenario for Clemson would be to make a bowl game. If Swinney can't do that, the school could be looking at paying his $57 million buyout. 3 biggest winners & losers from South Carolina's Week 1 win vs. Kent State Add us as a preferred source on Google