Championship or bust? Clemson football must handle enormous expectations

Antonio Williams is among the Tigers who could've tried the NFL waters but chose to come back to do more at Clemson.

Grayson Mann - Staff Writer - Saturday, May 03 2025

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

For this team, the burden of massive expectations from the outside has come from all angles.

The conclusion of the 2025 NFL Draft brings the most recent example to focus. Plenty of "way too early" mock drafts for 2026 have sprung out from the results of the April weekend in Green Bay, and a bevy of Tigers have been pinned to first-round selections.

One mock draft even has Cade Klubnik going first in next year's draft to Cleveland, putting him with Trevor Lawrence as the only No. 1 overall selections in program history.

A top selection for Klubnik likely means this group lived up to the billing, which includes National Championship expectations for 2025.

How does this group achieve those lofty goals?

The more important question may be how this team handles this type of offseason.

In years past, when National Championship expectations were rested on the shoulders of other Tiger teams, there was experience to help shoulder the quest to get there.

Does this squad have the same experience to pull back on?

Yes and no.

Back in 2016, Dabo Swinney's Tigers had just finished a season where they reached the National Championship for the first time in decades, and it was a team on the warpath.

Clemson was defending its title in 2017, and was on a similar path for redemption behind a freshman Lawrence en route to a second National Championship in 2018 against Alabama.

In that decade, there were players with extensive postseason experience, some having played in multiple title games.

Fast-forward to the 2020s, and Clemson has two playoff appearances. One such run came during the COVID-stricken season, which played out unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Then, there's the 2024 season.

The Tigers reached the playoffs in the expansion era after a three-season hiatus, traveling to Texas for the first set of home playoff games.

One of the lasting themes all spring and into the fall is this group's hunger to get back to that spot. As that three-year hiatus extended, Clemson fell out of more and more playoff projections as the losses piled up.

Now, the Tigers have found themselves back to the level of expectations when the program was seemingly at the peak of their powers.

Entering the fall, this group boasts plenty of returners who would've likely had their names called for this year's draft, coming back to finish what this group started. The expectations have radically shifted, and a spot back in the playoffs simply won't cut it for this roster.

Clemson may have its seat back at the table of elites soon, and the large consensus is that they have the adequate staff under Swinney and the talent on the roster to do it.

Expectations are one thing. Meeting those is another.

The burden of "championship or bust" fell onto the shoulders of the recent greats in Clemson's history, and now those on this roster will be tasked with carrying the torch of what's come before them.

We are still months away from an August kickoff against LSU, but that serves as more time for those expectations on the outside to drastically grow.