Four Reasons Why Clemson Tigers Can Win the ACC Next Season

Since head coach Dabo Swinney has been the head coach of the Clemson Tigers, they are always in the mix for the ACC Championship.

Swinney has nine ACC Championships to his name since being hired in the 2009 season, being the conference’s main powerhouse over the last 15 years. However, following a 7-6 finish in 2025, Clemson will look to get back to the top of the conference with significant changes.

While there are plenty of unknowns when talking about college football in the month of February, here are four reasons why the Tigers have a great chance to get Swinney’s tenth of his tenure with the program.

Clemson’s Difficult ACC Games Are Right at Home

Home-field advantage plays a factor in college football heavily, and Clemson should have its best crowds for its biggest games. That’s the case in 2026.

Clemson’s future schedule has North Carolina, Miami, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech at home in conference play, while its away slate is favorable against lesser teams.

The two biggest home games would end up being Miami and Virginia Tech. The Hurricanes are coming off a national championship appearance while the Hokies will have a completely new program under head coach James Franklin. The Tigers will have more than 80,000 fans in their stadium supporting the opposing 11 on the field, being a huge help.

Games against Cal and Florida State away will certainly be difficult, but it will be nice to home-field advantage for, arguably, the two biggest schools on the schedule in conference play.

The Offensive Potential of Chad Morris

The Tigers parted ways with three-year offensive coordinator Garrett Riley in the offseason and brought back Chad Morris. He has an ACC Championship under his belt in 2011, and he will look to bring that offense back.

Clemson will need numbers like Riley’s offense had in the 2024 season, when it finished top four in the ACC in points per game (34.7). With Morris, the Tigers averaged 36.3 a contest from 2011-14, and that would be enough to bring Clemson back.

It seems like defensive coordinator Tom Allen will have his defense ready as well, and if there is any improvement at all from that end in his second season, that will only help Clemson’s case to getting back to Bank of America Stadium.

Christopher Vizzina is expected to be the starter next season at quarterback, and he will have standout duo Bryant Wesco Jr. and TJ Moore at receiver. That’s a great foundation to bring back the Clemson offense of old.

This answer will get a lot clearer over the course of the offseason, and Morris will have two weeks of LSU and Georgia Southern to figure out the flow before beginning conference play.

Clemson is Finally Using the Transfer Portal, and It Will Pay Off

The Tigers added 10 transfers to their roster in the offseason, the most in program history. The experience and talent that the group will provide will help Swinney more than ever before.

Take a look at defensive end Will Heldt, for example. The Purdue transfer led the team in tackles for loss (15.5) and sacks (7.5) in his first season in a Clemson uniform. There’s a much bigger sample size that is coming from the 2026 offseason that could provide impacts like Heldt did.

That’s especially in the secondary, where Allen added a quartet of secondary players to reform his pass defense for next season. Especially with how breakdowns occurred in various games, a tightened-up secondary, as well as new pieces around the defensive line, will only help the Tigers win games that they might’ve lost last season.

Throw in others like SMU transfer running back Chris Johnson Jr., who Swinney calls “touchdown-fast”, and more winning elements have been added to a Clemson team eager to get back to the College Football Playoff.

Clemson Takes Advantage of Those “Few Plays” in 2026

Swinney used a statement with many of the close losses that the Tigers had last season: “we were a few plays away.”

A lot of those plays were in ACC play. Clemson had losses like a game-winning field goal as time expired against Georgia Tech and a two-point conversion in the final seasons to lose to Duke. If you flip both of those losses into wins, the Tigers have two losses in ACC play and are going to the ACC Championship.

If the Tigers want to win the ACC once again, they are going to have to win those late-game plays. That’s how they won in 2024 with a game-winning field goal against SMU by Nolan Hauser. Getting there, close wins over Virginia Tech and Pitt down the stretch helped put Clemson in Charlotte.

With new transfers, a new offensive coordinator and a team looking to get back to the top, Clemson simply has to pull out those late wins once again, and Swinney has the quality to do so in 2026.