Clemson to open 2023 season on the road in the ACC

The 2023 Clemson football schedule is being released Monday night, and we now know who the Tigers will open the year against.

Clemson will face Duke on the road in its season opener, it was announced Monday on the ACC Network.

The game will be played on Monday, Sept. 4, which is Labor Day.

This will be the first meeting between Clemson and Duke since 2018 when the Tigers beat the Blue Devils 35-6 at Death Valley.

Clemson and Duke have not played in Durham since 2012, which was a 56-20 win by the Tigers. Clemson currently leads the series 37-16-1.

Duke is coming off of an impressive season under first-year head coach Mike Elko, who was previously the defensive coordinator at Texas A&M.

The Blue Devils finished 9-4 in 2022, finishing the year with a 30-13 win over UCF in the Military Bowl. Duke went 5-3 in the ACC last season and earned wins over Miami and Wake Forest.

The 9-4 season marked a huge turnaround for a Duke team that finished 3-9 in 2021.

The Blue Devils hadn’t recorded a winning season since 2018 prior to last year and had not finished with at least nine wins since 2014.

While Duke had a better-than-expected 2022 season, it was an up-and-down year for Clemson.

The Tigers won the ACC championship for the seventh time in eight years and also won at least 10 games for the 12th consecutive year.

However, they lost to all three non-ACC Power 5 teams they faced and failed to reach the College Football Playoff for the second consecutive season.

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was asked what he would say to people who believe the Tigers program is slipping after Tennessee beat Clemson 31-14 in the Orange Bowl.

“I don’t really know what to say to them. We’re 11-3. Sure, I wish we were undefeated, but we’ve won the league seven out of the last eight years. I think that’s only happened one other time, and that was in the ’70s by Alabama,” Swinney said.

“We’ve been pretty consistent, and we’re going to continue to be consistent and keep trying to do everything we can to be undefeated around here. I think we won 11-plus games — in 1981 we won 12. I think we went 31 years before we won 11 games again at Clemson, and we did that in 2012, and I think we’ve done it eight times in the last 11 years. So I think we’ve been incredibly consistent.”