Clemson football head coach Dabo Swinney doesn’t often face a head coach more accomplished than he is, but one is at the helm for the Tigers’ next opponent.
Clemson will travel to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to face head coach Bill Belichick and the Tar Heels at Kenan Stadium on Saturday afternoon in the Tigers’ first contest following their open date last week.
The Tigers, 1-3, 0-2 ACC, are in uncharted territory under Swinney, beginning the season with the worst four-game stretch since 2004. That same year, Belichick would have his first Super Bowl under his belt with the New England Patriots, and his second would come later that season to go back-to-back with the team.
Fast forward 21 years, and the legendary head coach added four more Super Bowl trophies with the Patriots and is now coaching his first season in college football following 29 total seasons as a head coach at the highest level.
“Never in my lifetime did I think I would get an opportunity to coach against coach Belichick,” Swinney said on an ACC Huddle Special with the North Carolina head coach. “I mean, how cool is that? Again, you don’t get lucky, he’s got eight rings.”
Points have been hard to come by for Clemson, which averages 19.8 points per game across its four contests of the season so far. The team is currently last in the ACC, with Swinney looking for answers that seemed to be solved a season ago with his unit.
Offensive coordinator Garrett Riley and the offense finished with an average of 34.7 points per contest in 2024, which made it to the top four in the ACC. Despite returning all but two starters from the unit, the Tigers have struggled with starting strong.
“I think a lot of times, maybe some bad things or some inopportune stuff happens in the game, and you just let that linger too much,” Riley said. “We really have to have that short-term memory.”
Swinney said that during the bye week, he did some “soul searching” in his frustration that the team has been on the wrong end of history so far this season. A fire drill game-winning field goal in Atlanta and a slow start against Syracuse have the team almost mathematically out of a chance at the ACC Championship, which means the College Football Playoff is pretty much impossible for the Tigers.
The Tigers have a 0.2% chance to win the ACC, which is frustrating given the team’s high preseason expectations.
“It’s obviously really disappointing where we are,” Swinney said. “You look at everything when things aren’t going well, and the reality of it is it’s never too far away from one side or the other. You’re not that far away from being on the right side of things.”
North Carolina, 2-2, comes into the weekend off a bye week as well, beginning its eight-straight ACC game schedule against the reigning ACC champion — the Tigers. Both the Tar Heels’ wins have come from outside the Power Four conferences, while their losses have been to TCU and UCF to bookend their season thus far.
Which North Carolina quarterback the Tigers will see ahead of the game is uncertain. Starting quarterback Gio Lopez suffered an injury against UCF in the team’s last game before its bye week. Backup quarterback Max Johnson could be named the starter, though Belichick has not confirmed yet.
Similar to Clemson, North Carolina has struggled to score points compared to the rest of the ACC. The Tar Heels have averaged 21 points per game, which is 15th in the conference out of 17 total teams.
This contest is the first time Clemson will travel to Chapel Hill since the 2019 season, resulting in a narrow 21-20 victory over the Tar Heels. The Tigers have also seen North Carolina most recently in the 2022 ACC Championship and a matchup at Memorial Stadium in 2023, winning both by multiple scores.
Both of those games also featured Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik, who had a coming-out game against the opponent as a freshman in 2022. In a 39-10 victory at Bank of America Stadium, Klubnik was named the game’s most valuable player after coming in off the bench.
Now, it will be steering the team in the right direction for Klubnik, who has led an underwhelming offense compared to the high expectations ahead of the season. He will look to play complementary football to help turn the season around following the slow start.
“We have to play as a team,” Klubnik said. “Complementary football is where we have not shone. When the defense has been playing great and we haven’t done great on offense, and vice versa.”
Swinney is all about improvement, which the team will look to show after a weekend off from gameplay. The Clemson head coach knows his team is better than what they’ve played, but there’s only 60 minutes in a football game to prove it.
“We’ll be better,” Swinney said. “We have good people, but we’ve not done a good job. Again, it’s a result business, right?”
Saturday’s kickoff is set for noon from Kenan Stadium, and the game will be broadcast on ESPN.
