A Tiger Talk: Swinney Backed Up 'Bunch of Nobodies' Talk in LSU Loss

During the middle of fall camp, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney didn’t reveal any starters or a depth chart throughout the process. He said the group didn’t have any standouts throughout the practice period.

"Everybody’s just working. We're just a bunch of nobodies,” he said in August. “We’ll see if anybody becomes somebody as we play some games."

After Week 1, that’s how the Tigers played in Baton Rouge, getting blown out 51-10 to open their 2026 season. Perhaps when you look into the numbers, though, the lopsided score might’ve been the least damaging.

Clemson was outnumbered in production by 499 yards. While Swinney’s group averaged 1.5 yards per carry, LSU averaged over five yards per rush while dominating the trenches. By the time the first offensive and defensive drives were over, there was an obvious mismatch between the two teams at the line of scrimmage.

We knew there would be growing pains with the offensive line, with a new center and four new starters, but the sound and LSU’s quality made it nearly impossible to move the ball. Clemson punted on 10 of its first 12 drives, while a pick-six was one of the other outcomes.

While going homegrown has always been Swinney’s style, a lot of these new starters had to function in one of the loudest environments in college football. Clemson’s starting right tackle, Easton Ware, recorded his first collegiate snaps in the Bayou.

A few clips that were a microcosm of Clemson’s OL play against LSU: pic.twitter.com/lydF071Ldr
— Nic Painter (@PainterNic) September 6, 2026

This matchup was a one-score game a year ago and it came down to the final possession. We ended up figuring out that both teams were mediocre, and we saw two different types of groups that responded to it.

One completely overhauled its program. Lane Kiffin was hired, and much of his offensive staff joined him, and nearly 50 transfers joined him in Baton Rouge. Another kept the coaching regime, made selective picks in the transfer portal and added an offensive coordinator who would help bring him back the previous successes of a program.

Saturday’s loss simply showed us that the way things are run is not the way college football is heading for Clemson. While Swinney’s group scored the same number of points that it did in last year’s loss, LSU bullied its way to a blowout of multiple scores.

So, what’s next?

Now, there will be a runway until Clemson’s next important contest, which will be North Carolina in under two weeks. The Tigers face Georgia Southern next weekend at home, meaning there is a game to figure out who the best players are on the team heading into ACC play. I think that’s an important question for Swinney to find as the program continues to head away from the top competition.

Of course, one of those questions will be at quarterback, but I’ll leave a column in the next weeks to determine that.

But if there’s one takeaway from Clemson’s thumping, it’s this: if the Tigers want to compete for national championships again, they will need to add everywhere in the portal moving forward, and especially at the line of scrimmage. It’s not hard to see why it was Swinney’s worst loss from a scoring standpoint in his career.

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