CHARLOTTE, N.C. — With two national titles to his name, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney is past the point of trying to validate his worth.“Well, most people don’t have one, and probably never will get one. So I don’t really feel like I gotta go win another national title to prove anything to anybody,” Swinney told The Athletic at ACC Kickoff on Thursday.“I just wanna focus on the things that really drive me, and that is impacting these guys’ lives, truly fulfilling the purpose that we have in our program. Nobody wants to win more than me. And we’ve won 11 (conference and national) championships in the last 15 years. I think the next closest coach has six. So, being who I am, that’s served us well. So I don’t know how to be anything other than me, but as far as, like, I gotta go win another national championship to prove something to somebody, I’m not really wired that way.”Swinney built a program at Clemson that went toe-to-toe with Nick Saban’s Alabama dynasty for half of the 2010s. The past five years haven’t been the same, and Clemson is coming off its worst season (7-6) under Swinney since 2010, his third year as head coach.The 2025 team was one of the country’s biggest disappointments. Coming off a College Football Playoff appearance and with some highly touted returnees anchoring the defense, the Tigers seemed poised to return to national championship contention.Instead, Clemson finished tied for seventh in the ACC with a 4-4 record, including home losses to Syracuse, Duke and SMU.“Because we were terrible in pass defense, the worst I’ve had,” Swinney said of last year’s team. “And we didn’t run the ball anywhere near like we need to, which affected us on third down, affected our scoring.”When the NFL Draft rolled around in April, Clemson’s missed opportunity seemed even more glaring. The Tigers had nine players drafted, including two in the first round. Quarterback Cade Klubnik went in the fourth round to the New York Jets.“I don’t think you want to dwell on that, but at the same time, you don’t want to completely forget it because there are many aspects of not only the game of football, but the game of life that you can learn from a season like that last year,” said linebacker Sammy Brown, sounding a bit like his coach. “How to overcome adversity, how to be a man and face adversity and be able to overcome it.“At the end of the day, we really are focusing this offseason on resetting and, you know, resetting our goals, resetting our standards and learning from last year, but this is a new season, this is a new team.”