A messy offensive performance that figured itself out randomly in the second half, a defense that allowed a mid-major program to storm down the field in succession and a Heisman-level quarterback throwing away easy interceptions. Doesn’t it all sound familiar?
On Saturday, the No. 8 Clemson Tigers beat the Troy Trojans in a messy, rainy matchup with the score ending 27-16. Both a pregame and mid-game lightning delay pushed a 3:30 p.m. contest into a borderline back-to-back night game for the Tigers.
A gloomier Death Valley crowd looked forward to an absolute smackdown, only to see something that the Clemson faithful can attest to being some sort of deja vu.
In hindsight, 2016 was certainly a great year for Clemson, but feelings were similarly low after a Week 2 game that pitted the Tigers against the Trojans. Just as the 2025 Tigers faced a devastating loss to a ranked opponent, the 2016 Tigers were coming off a very tight and choppy battle against Auburn that ended in a narrow 19-13 score.
Comments flew around the college football echo chamber, calling head coach Dabo Swinney’s 2016 team fraudulent, and that future championship-winning quarterback Deshaun Watson was no good.
By looking at the numbers and the play-by-play, it all makes sense.
The 2016 performance was undisciplined. In an infamous moment of the game, wide receiver Ray-Ray McCloud III accidentally fumbled the ball right before crossing the end zone plane as he tried to celebrate what would have been a 75-yard punt return touchdown. Watson himself threw two interceptions and was virtually outperformed in all ways by Troy’s signal caller, Brandon Silvers.
Clemson had to rely on grabbing an onside kick recovery with 44 seconds left in the fourth to ensure the victory.
Flash forward to this most recent Clemson and Troy matchup, and the same patterns seem to have happened all over again.
An easy Troy touchdown to take the early lead, frustrating turnovers — including a walk-in pick six — and missed opportunities saw a similar narrative to that of the one nine years ago.
“I feel like I’m living in 2016 all over again,” Swinney said. “In fact, I went back and looked at my notes from 2016 after the Troy game, and it was like, I could’ve just walked into the team meeting with the same comments.”
Troy came into Death Valley once again and attempted to expose a highly-ranked Clemson team, which was already off a doubtful performance against an SEC opponent. The parallels between the 2016 and 2025 teams are alive and well, and might be something for the “glass half empty” Clemson fan to acknowledge and maybe even appreciate.
It’s not the start that really matters, it’s how the team finished in the end. The Tigers scored 27 unanswered points and forced two turnovers in the second half, including one that hit the back of cornerback Ashton Hampton’s haunches, which safety Ricardo Jones was able to snag.
The 16-point comeback for Clemson was the third-largest in the history of games at Death Valley, proving that the Tigers overcame major adversity.
“There’s a reason there are only three,” Swinney said. “Because when you get down like that, you usually get beat.”
The most recent Troy matchup began with a lot of concern regarding the short-term future of Clemson football, proving haters right and leading to more questions about the identity of this seemingly solid offensive squad. However, the 2016 game against Troy also began this exact way for the team back then.
Swinney knows this process all too well, recalling the fact that the 2016 team totaled 11 drops in its first two games, which led to conversations about how poor Watson and Clemson overall truly were to surface.
He believes all this talk — now surrounding Cade Klubnik and his offense in the present day — is simply “rat poison” and just negativity and distractions for the team to get around.
“I think it came down to an onside kick,” Swinney said. “(We) couldn’t stop them in the fourth quarter; we won 30-24. That was the national championship (team)! ‘What’s wrong? They all suck. Everything’s bad.’”
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” he continued. “It doesn’t always go perfect.”
Whether or not the echo chamber wants to agree with Swinney and his positive look at a very familiar feeling and team, the similarities are just too close to look away from. It just so happened that the same Clemson team in 2016 that struggled with an “easy” opponent like Troy went on to win the championship against a dynasty Alabama squad.
The difference between the two games at the end of the day is that the 2025 team walked away with their matchup against Troy, while the 2016 group’s contest, as Swinney said, came down to an onside kick. Perhaps Troy is Clemson’s near-decennial wake-up call.
Clemson fans will find out if this prophecy is true with an away game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets this weekend.
