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1. While we’re tapping our watches in wait for the next domino to fall, let’s have some fun with numbers, shall we?
Through this offseason, Dabo Swinney has repeatedly expressed that Clemson has never had a No. 1-ranked recruiting class.
While believing such a statement to be both accurate and sincere, one can’t also help but wonder if it doesn't come from the same place in the program’s soul where all of last season’s talk about Alabama as the greatest team ever took root and festered.
Doubt Swinney’s lil ol’ Clemson, and we’ll show you.
Tracing back to the moments following the Tigers’ latest national championship victory, we’ve opined that Clemson appeared en route to its highest-ranked class in program history. That this one is shaping into something different; they’ve had unprecedented top-end quality (2018) and solid quantity (2019) the past two cycles, and 2020 stood to deliver both.
The 2015 class posted a No. 4 finish in the Rivals.com rankings, followed by a sixth-place spot in 2016.
As far as per-signee star rating, the 2018 haul featuring Trevor Lawrence and five more five-stars registered a program-high 4.06 per-prospect average.
The way things are taking shape, this Clemson class should reside somewhere between the school’s best and the nation’s best … ever.
The Tigers enter the week at No. 3, trailing Alabama and LSU – the latter by virtue of its commitment from among the nation’s top-five prospects.
Oh, but we feel secure in suggesting the best is yet to come for Clemson’s class – and relatively soon.
If you simply add in Tigerillustrated.com’s two five-star projections as well as the country’s No. 1 overall prospect on the hook, Clemson would have almost enough recruiting points to finish among last year’s top 10 teams – and with six places left to count, as Rivals.com factors in a school’s 20 highest-rated signees.
Let’s go to the other extreme.
We would frame Clemson as factoring in the top two for seven publicly uncommitted five-stars.
Add those seven into the equation, and the Tigers would have 3,025 points – just shy of what Georgia and Alabama notched in finishing Nos. 1-2 last cycle. And Clemson would still have two more additions to count toward its point total.
Individual rankings will invariably change over the next 10 months, and odds are more of their targets would go down than up simply because there isn’t much more room for them to go up.
So we’re not saying Clemson will notch the No. 1 class.
But it’s not unreasonable to think it could, either.
2. We start, as usual, by closing the book on the Tigers’ newest addition this past week.
Jacksonville (Fla.) Trinity Christian corner Fred Davis kicked off Clemson’s potential five-star streak Monday upon announcing on a local radio show.
