Clemson Tigers Taking Pride in Bringing Back Home Dominance Against SMU

The Clemson Tigers used to have one of the toughest home stadiums to play in college football, having as much as a 40-game home winning streak that lasted from 2016 to 2022. 

Now, that script has flipped. Clemson has lost its last four games against opponents in the Power Four, and the advantage is something that head coach Dabo Swinney wants to have back. 

“We’ve stunk,” he said on Tuesday. “I mean, we’ve lost three out of our last four games at home. I know last year’s a different team, but this team, we’ve not done well. 

Clemson began the year 1-3 with two home losses to begin the team’s slow start, but now, the team is picking up momentum. 

The players saw this home-field advantage while they were getting recruited, making it a vital reason why they wanted to play for Swinney. Now, the main focus is on bringing that advantage back. 

“We want to put the ‘Death’ back in the Valley,” linebacker Sammy Brown said. “That’s what coach Swinney said, but it starts with us. We have to instill that mindset into our brains, like ‘hey, we don’t lose at home,’ and it starts this weekend.”

The opponent could be regarded as one of the biggest of the season: the SMU Mustangs. It’s a rematch of the 2024 ACC Championship, where a walk-off field goal was the deciding factor to send Clemson to the College Football Playoff. 

Despite the postseason hopes hanging by a thread, the focus now is to give SMU its first in-conference loss of the season, as well as give the fans the performance that they deserve. 

“We take pride in winning at home, obviously, with the home win streak that we had a couple years ago, so I think it’s very important to make sure that our fans are getting their money’s worth because they’re doing their part by coming and supporting us,” running back Keith Adams Jr. said. “We have to do our part by winning.”

With over 81,000 fans mostly donned in orange and purple, wide receiver Bryant Wesco Jr. believes in paying the fans back with a strong performance against a top-quality opponent like the Mustangs, who will use a win to try to propel them back into the top 25. 

“We've got to own it up to the fans,” Wesco said. "Like coach Swinney probably said, I know the fans are disappointed that we haven’t been playing well at home. We know they come to the games and spend a lot of money, so we just need to pay them back, and make sure that we start winning back at home like we used to do a few years ago.”

However, the team will keep it a balance between a regular work week and a chance to bring the chaos of a home crowd back to fruition. Swinney is bringing the planning throughout the week, but the players will be the ones to show that extra effort to help Clemson fans. 

“We just got to continue to come to practice every single day and just get the plan down so we can go out there on Saturday and be successful,” Jahiem Lawson said. 

“It’s a little fuel to the fire, but at the same time, it’s our next game, so you don’t want to make the game too much and more than it actually is,” Brown added. “But, yeah, I think there you can add a little fuel to the fire.”

The Mustangs and Tigers kick off at 3:30 p.m. from Memorial Stadium, and it will be about bringing the two standout performances on the road against North Carolina and Boston College back to Death Valley, where it matters just as much. 

“We really didn't play well in any game until North Carolina, collectively,” Swinney said. We’ve had some players play well every week; it’s just been like ‘tag, you’re it’. So, we just haven’t played well as a team, but they’ve had two good games and they’ve played really well, complementary football, so now we’ve gone to Chapel Hill to Chestnut Hill, now we’re back on the Hill and we need to keep playing well.”