By STEVE REED AP Sports Writer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — The Clemson Tigers have all of the pieces in place to win another national championship.
Now it’s just a matter of executing.
The Tigers return the most experienced team in college football, and will be heavy favorites to win their ninth Atlantic Coast Conference championship in the past 11 years. They return eight starters on both sides of the ball with a combined 309 starts. ESPN’s Bill Connelly has Clemson’s return production rate at 80%, the highest in Division I football.
That includes a Heisman Trophy hopeful at quarterback in Cade Klubnik, who is 19-9 as Clemson’s starter and is coming off a season in which he threw for 3,639 yards and 36 touchdowns with only six interceptions. The Tigers are particularly stacked at wide receiver with any of six players capable of starting for most teams around the country.
Combine that with a certain future College Football Hall of Fame head coach in Dabo Swinney and you have a recipe for success.
But Swinney said that while having so much returning experience is “awesome,” it comes with a cautionary tale.
“Experience, as they say, doesn’t come at a discount,” said Swinney, who led Clemson to national titles in 2016 and 2018.
What the 55-year-old head coach means is there are no shortcuts to success — and nothing is guaranteed.
“The guys have put the work in,” Swinney said. “We’ve been around a lot of good teams, and this team has the ingredients to be a really good team, but we’ve got to go do the work. We can’t talk about it or predict our way into it.”
The Tigers will be tested right off the bat, opening the season at home against Southeastern Conference power LSU.
A year ago, Clemson lost to Georgia 34-3 in Week 1, leading some to question whether the Tigers would embark on a fast, downward spiral. Instead, the Tigers bounced back with six straight wins and went on to beat SMU 34-31 in the ACC championship game at Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium, earning a berth in the 12-team College Football Playoff.
“We’ve got a bunch of great young men,” Swinney said. “Our quarterback, especially, that’s had to manage success well, and he’s had to manage some failure well, too. He’s grown into a great leader of our team.”
Clemson’s experience speaks to its retention rate.
In an age where players are transferring from school to school on an almost daily basis, Clemson has been able to keep the vast majority of its players in Death Valley.
Swinney attributes much of that to a program at the school called the P.A.W. Journey, where players are taught everything from how to tie a tie and write a resume, to financial literacy and the means of secure internships across the world.
“These guys can leave any time they want,” Swinney said. “They have to choose, first of all, to come, and then they have to stay. I just think that says a lot about kind of how we put it together on the front end in recruiting guys that really align with our purpose, guys that really value education and want structure and family and accountability.”
Klubnik is a perfect example.
He could have left Clemson at any point during his 3 1/2-year career when times got tough, but chose to stay and was rewarded last year with being named MVP of last year’s ACC championship game. The Tigers lost 38-24 to Texas in the first round of the playoffs, but Swinney said his players have used that as motivation.
“Certainly last year and getting a chance to maybe get a little glimpse at the top of the mountain, that’s certainly given them a little fuel as they’ve gotten back to work since January,” Swinney said.
No one wants it more than Klubnik.
He feels the Tigers have the talent and experience to win it all.
“We’ve been a young team, I feel like, every year I’ve been here,” Klubnik said. “We’re a veteran team and very experienced, got a lot of guys that have played a lot of ball. That’s really exciting, but we’ve got to go do it. We’ve got to go do it and take advantage of every opportunity we get.”
It appeared not long ago that Clemson’s success might taper off after the NCAA relaxed rules about players transferring from school to school.
But the Tigers, despite not being big players in the transfer portal, have remained consistent. This past season they joined Alabama, Florida State and Oklahoma as the only teams in college football history to win at least nine games in 14 straight seasons.
It’s a streak Swinney hopes to maintain.
“That’s really for us what it’s always been about, just being incredibly consistent. We’re not perfect, but we’re incredibly consistent. That’s because we’re purpose driven and we’re relationship driven. I think our program reflects that purpose in everything, in every aspect.”