Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney is not having a good time right now.

After his Tigers got walloped by visiting Syracuse on Saturday, scrutiny will only intensify for Swinney as Clemson fans watch the 2025 season crater into the sea.

A playoff bid at this point for a 1-3 Clemson is just laughable right now; a winning season isn't even a lock after expectations were so high for the Tigers coming into the season with likely 2026 NFL Draft prospect Cade Klubnik at quarterback.

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The team losing to Georgia Tech last week at the final horn put Swinney's game management into question, and needing a comeback win against Troy two weeks ago quelled a good bit of national title talk. However, the latest flub is a brutal loss to Syracuse, a program that has only beaten Clemson once since the schools started playing each other as ACC opponents in 2013.

A lot goes into the decline of the Swinney years at Clemson, perhaps nothing quite as detrimental as Swinney's recent unwillingness to evolve his approach to building a team in the NIL/transfer portal era.

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While the Tigers aren't likely to pull the plug on the program's best-ever coach right after a loss like this, Swinney's coaching seat must be getting mightily uncomfortable with the heat. It's going to take a remarkable turnaround from Clemson this fall to justify keeping Swinney around for the future.

His defensive posture during a Tuesday press conference looks even worse after Saturday's defeat.

"Hey, listen, if Clemson's tired of winning, they can send me on my way," Swinney said, per ESPN's Andrea Adelson. "But I'm gonna go somewhere else and coach. I ain't going to the beach. Hell, I'm 55. I've got a long way to go. Y'all are gonna have to deal with me for a while."

Well, you can't get tired of winning if you're not... y'know... winning. Losing to Syracuse and Georgia Tech in consecutive weeks is a massive setback in Swinney's mission to prove to Clemson why he should stay.

If this whole situation doesn't get better as quickly as possible, you're looking at a major regime change in Death Valley. Swinney really will be elsewhere in 2026.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Is Dabo Swinney on the hot seat after another bad Clemson loss?

Reporting by Cory Woodroof, For The Win / For The Win

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