Clemson Head Coach Dabo Swinney revealed on Wednesday that incoming Freshman Ari Watford’s torn ACL played an important role in his utilization of the transfer portal defensively this offseason.
Watford is a 4-star edge rusher from Virginia, who was ranked as the nation’s 112th overall prospect according to ESPN. The student athlete suffered the torn ACL injury before he arrived on campus, pressuring Swinney to add depth to the position for the upcoming season.
Although Swinney has historically been hesitant to utilize the transfer portal, he has acquired multiple components so far this offseason. In terms of defense, he added Will Heldt, a Junior from Purdue who was widely considered one of the best defensive ends available in the portal. This acquisition marked the first defensive addition through the portal for coach Swinney since its inception.
More recently, Swinney added Jeremiah Alexander from Alabama. Alexander is a former 5-star recruit who can be utilized as a linebacker or an edge rusher. The 6-foot-2 and 235 pound athlete played with current Clemson defensive lineman Peter Woods in high school.
“We didn’t anticipate signing a defensive line portal guy. We had two great ones committed and we were taking two, But as y’all know things can change in recruiting,” stated Swinney at Tom Allen’s introductory press conference.
Dabo Swinney
“We had a young man decide to back out and go somewhere else, and there wasn’t anybody left to recruit that could fill the need that we needed, so now we have a gap and we have to go to the portal and we needed a high level guy. And we got the guy that I wanted to get. So that was that situation, you know Ari Watford tore his ACL, we had a kid back out, so we needed to go get a guy and we did.”
Since the inception of the transfer portal, Swinney had only acquired 2 players before this season, both backup quarterbacks. Last season, Clemson was one of four FBS schools who did not take in any transfers. The other three schools were all service academies: Air Force, Navy and Army.
The Clemson football team will prepare to open their 2025-2026 campaign in Death Valley when they take on LSU. The Clemson Tigers will be returning a large portion of their 2024 roster, which made the College Football Playoffs for the first time since 2020.
