Bruce Feldman defends placing Clemson's Dabo Swinney at No. 2 in his Top 25 CFB coach ranking

During an appearance on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” FOX Sports’ Bruce Feldman listed Clemson’s Dabo Swinney as the No. 2 head coach in college football, only trailing Georgia’s Kirby Smart. After revealing his list, Feldman defended Swinney’s high spot on his totem pole.

“Given what Dabo Swinney has done, all he has done at Clemson, I know the program right now feels like it’s backsliding some, but it’s really, really hard to win national titles in college football,” Feldman said. “Very few guys have done it. He’s won two. He obviously beat Nick Saban a couple of times.”

After Swinney accepted an offer to become Clemson’s head coach in 2009, the program saw a meteoric rise. By the time the NCAA created the College Football Playoff in 2014, Clemson was one of the top teams in the country.

Clemson reached the CFP every season from 2016-21, defeating Alabama in the national championship in 2017 and 2019. However, once NIL and the transfer portal were introduced to the game, Clemson’s success gradually decreased.

In the 2023 campaign, Clemson finished with a 9-4 record, the program’s worst since 2010, which was Swinney’s second year at the helm. Despite the Tigers’ recent shortcomings, Feldman hasn’t forgotten what Swinney is capable of.

“He’s had six top-four finishes since 2015,” Feldman. “I don’t think that he’s handled the transfer portal in a great way to maintain as program. But, even as it feels like it’s backslid, they’re still 30-10 in the past three years.

“Again, just because of what he’s done before that, really revised Clemson and turned it into a powerhouse, I couldn’t see anybody else I could make a strong enough case to be in front of him.”

With the majority of his roster returning for the 2024 season, Swinney is ready to return his program to familiar heights. On Monday, Swinney revealed his goals for his team this spring.

“We’ve got 15 days, and the goal this spring is to install what you want to get installed from a schematic standpoint,” Swinney said. “But, you know, it’s more how you do it and why you do it as opposed to what we’re doing. I mean that’s the big part of spring ball. This is a time to experiment.

“When you look at our breakdowns from last year, it’s fundamental stuff,” Swinney said. “I mean it’s back to the basic. It’s fundamentals. It’s your eyes, it’s technique. So we’ll spend a lot of time this spring trying to really, really reinforce the details of what we do.”