It’s a big year for Clemson, to put it lightly. The program’s rise and fall have been well chronicled, but we’ll throw in one stat just because I can’t resist: Clemson lost more than twice as many ACC games in the past four years (seven) than they did in their dynastic 6-year run from 2015-20 (three). Even in 2022, when Clemson went undefeated in ACC play, they lost by double digits to Notre Dame and Tennessee, and to an 8-win South Carolina team. The Tigers’ success in the late 2010s wasn’t going to last forever, but the fact that Clemson’s inevitable fall coincided with the rise of the NIL era — and Dabo Swinney’s many, many quotes on the matter — led to many praying on his demise. 

Clemson snuck into the College Football Playoff by upsetting SMU in the ACC Championship. (A brief moment of reflection of how that game ended, again because I can’t resist: After blowing a 17-point lead, Clemson returned a kickoff to near midfield with nine seconds left, completed a 17-yard pass, and then Nolan Hauser booted an ACC Championship record 56-yard field goal to avoid an overtime that Clemson probably would’ve lost.) It boggles the mind to think about how the narrative around Clemson would be different today if the final 16 seconds of that game didn’t play out the way they did and a 9-4, 20th-ranked Clemson ended its season in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl instead of the CFP, but they did, and now here we are.

And so 2025 sets up as kind of a reckoning that no one really asked for at Clemson. Even though Clemson is playing the NIL and portal game along with everyone else, it still sets itself apart from the rest of college football as something of a shining city on a hill. Is this a 9-figure business in a cutthroat pursuit of a national title or an extended summer camp? Why not both?!

“I tell people all the time that playing at Clemson is the closest thing you can get to that feeling of playing on a high school football team, that when you take the field you’re playing with the same guys,” Walker Parks, Clemson’s sixth-year senior offensive guard, told ESPN. “It makes a difference, man. You grow up with these dudes.”

The college football pundit class sees an elite team (FootballScoop’s Pre-Preseason Top 25 had them at No. 4) with elite talent (ESPN’s Matt Miller 2026 mock draft had three Tigers in his top six) even though Clemson was not elite last season, particularly on defense. Defensive linemen TJ Parker and Peter Woods’s reputations, Swinney said, have out-run their production to this point as college players. “The last time I saw them out there, there was a running back running for 80 yards (at Texas),” he said last month. “Same dudes.”

Defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin is now at Oklahoma, and Tom Allen was hired away from Penn State. (Defensive tackles coach Nick Eason was elevated to co-coordinator, and Mickey Conn lost his co-coordinator title while remaining pass game coordinator and adding co-special teams duties.) Allen explained back in January that this move was about family and fit. Taking the Clemson job puts Tom and his wife Tracy within one state of all three of their children. “For my wife to be able to see her grandchildren on a consistent basis, you can’t replace that,” Allen said at the time. And then here’s Allen on the fit with his new boss. “I just think there’s a lot of similarities,” he said at Clemson’s media day. “We read the same books, you know, we have a lot of the same values. We have a similar philosophy on life, what’s important to us.”

That’s great and all, but the last two national champions ranked first and fourth in yards per play defense. Clemson was 64th last season. What’s Allen doing to improve the product on the field?

The tackling, for starters. “That, to me, is the one thing that I probably put the most emphasis on. Why? Because it’s the one thing that every kid completely controls,” Allen said. “Every player completely controls his effort, so those were the things that we wanted to keep emphasizing as we are going into camp.”

“If you don’t have the right technique, you’re going to hear it,” Swinney said back in the spring.

You get what you emphasize in coaching, and everything Allen emphasis is in bold and underlined.

“His energy allows you to want to come to work each and everyday and put everything on the line for him,” linebacker Jeremiah Alexander said. “He just allows us to play fast and physically, keeping the play calls simple and we are just able to go out there and play ball, not thinking a lot.”

“Every single thing is watched and accounted for,” added linebacker Wade Woodaz. “Every stat, every single rep and you will be held accountable, if you do good or if you do bad. You’ll be praised when you do well, then when you do bad, you’ll know about it.”

One more, from linebacker Dee Crayton. “His energy, and what he brings to the table for us as a defense, [it] just makes us want to go out there and play hard everyday. It’s something you can’t explain.”

Will Clemson dazzle opposing offensive coordinators with the latest cutting-edge schemes? Maybe. Probably not. Will Clemson get a lot more out of its players simply because Tom Allen is in the building? Almost certainly yes.

Time will tell if that will prove to be enough to win a national title and end the years-long debate surrounding this program with an exclamation point. But Tom Allen fits everything Clemson is and is not, and that right there is enough for Dabo Swinney.