Clemson, Breaking into Better Form, Presents Opportunity for BC Football to Improve

When a night game which has the potential to be the most-watched matchup among Atlantic Coast Conference teams presents itself—which is the case for the Boston College football team as it prepares to host Clemson on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET in Chestnut Hill, Mass.—seizing the opportunity to showcase improvement is vital.

The Eagles have nothing to lose at this point, following a 48-7 loss on the road to Pittsburgh.

Sitting at 1-4 overall and 0-3 in the ACC, BC has nowhere to go but up, and Saturday holds an opportunity for second-year head coach Bill O’Brien to prove that he can handle adversity. He has done it before in his career, and there is no reason that he shouldn’t be able to right the ship to some degree now.

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"It's a home game, [a] night game,” O’Brien said after Tuesday’s practice. “[It] will be a great environment."

Ranked as the No. 4 team in the preseason AP Top-25 Poll, the Tigers, as always, expected big things heading into 2025.

Three-year starting quarterback Cade Klubnik was voted the 2025 Preseason All-ACC Player of the Year after manufacturing 6,483 combined passing yards in 2023 and 2024, along with 55 touchdown passes on a decent completion percentage (63.7). He only threw 15 interceptions across that span.

But Klubnik is not the only player on Clemson’s current roster with high-end potential. The Tigers are loaded at every position, from defensive line to offensive line, wide receivers to secondary, and everything in between.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney drew some criticism following a 1-3 start to the season in which the Tigers suffered losses at home against LSU, Syracuse, and fell to Georgia Tech on the road, but a 38-10 blowout win over North Carolina this past weekend has taken off some of that disparagement for the time being.

"Maybe [Clemson's] record isn't what they want it to be, but put on the film,” O’Brien said. “I'd say the teams that beat them did a great job. ... Clemson's a hell of a football team. So for us, here at BC in the second year of this program, we're gonna show up, be ready to play."

Clemson is just beginning to break into form, and the Eagles face a tall task ahead of them as the hosts this Saturday to a program which has set the bar for the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference for the past decade and more.

Since the inception of the College Football Playoff (CFP) in 2014, Clemson, the reigning conference champion, is the only program in the ACC to have won a National Championship. The Tigers have done it twice (2016-17, 2018-19) in four title-game appearances.

“They don’t have a lot of flaws, you know?” O’Brien said. “They’re aggressive. They do a great job in all three phases. … I mean, it would be hard pressed for me to say that this team has a lot of flaws. We’re going to have to play really well to be in the game, but we’ll show up. I told these guys, our guys are excited. [It will be a] great environment Saturday night, and we’re excited for it.”

Shipping up. pic.twitter.com/s0pJ6dWpiO
— Clemson Football (@ClemsonFB) October 7, 2025

Beyond Klubnik, there is a sizable amount of players on the Tigers’ roster with potential to be 2026 National Football League (NFL) Draft picks.

Defensive tackle Peter Woods (6-3, 311), a junior, is one of the toughest players in the nation and registered 28 total tackles, nine tackles for loss, and three sacks in 2024. It hasn’t been the greatest start to his third year at the collegiate level, but he is not a player that any opponent of Clemson’s will choose to overlook.

Junior cornerback Aveion Terrell (5-11, 181) is a stingy defender who has accumulated 16 solo tackles, three forced fumbles, and six passes defended this season. Sophomore wideout Bryant Wesco Jr. (6-2, 190) is in the conversation for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the best wide receiver in college football annually, with 26 receptions for 431 yards and five touchdown receptions so far.

Defensive end T.J. Parker (6-3, 265) and linebacker Wade Woodaz (6-3, 235) wreak havoc for opposing offenses up front, and the Tigers’ offensive line boasts future professional talent in Blake Miller, Ryan Linthicum, and Walker Parks.

The list doesn’t end there, but that’s for a later matter. It just goes to show how deep Swinney’s roster is—and has been for his entire head coaching career since 2009—and what BC is up against come Saturday.

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"They're Clemson, right?” O’Brien said. “They have a history of winning, and there's a reason why they have a history of winning. They know how to coach, they know how to recruit, and for a long time in this league they've been the gold standard. It's exciting for our team."

With all that being said, there is nobody who is more confident in his team to rebound than O’Brien, and facing such exceptional talent on the opposite sideline is possibly the best way to handle coming off of such a throwaway loss.

Launching his players back into the ring against a squad that will be primed for action, and who will be ready from the very first whistle of the game, is the best way to test if the Eagles have teeth—or if they will choose to sink even further.

"All we can say is we’re gonna continue to do our best out there and we understand your frustration because we’re frustrated too,” BC tight end Jeremiah Franklin said. “We know how you guys feel [the fans]. This is obviously not what we want to put out there as a team."

BC needs to be as focused as ever for gameday this week, according to O’Brien and Franklin. It will take everything that it has to pull off the upset, and more.

"We're as locked in as we can be,” Franklin said.

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