From curtain calls to Columbia

CLEMSON — Early in the fourth quarter, Dabo Swinney had enough.

He’d seen Furman move the ball too much and too easily against his backup defense.

Saturday was a day for curtain calls.

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The first-team defense had to return to the stage for an encore.

You don’t want to pile on a team too much for a showing against an FCS team, one week before a big rivalry game and one week after an emotional victory on the road over a ranked team.

But you also don’t want to gloss over the fact that Furman (6-6) was dangerously close to making it a two-score game in the fourth quarter.

How close was Swinney to having to call back his offensive starters, including Cade Klubnik, in the fourth quarter?

Way too close. That’s fair to say.

The surface-level takeaways were positive.

Clemson (6-5) is eligible for a bowl.

Clemson has a winning record for the first time since last year.

Clemson has won three games in a row.

And Clemson has a young weapon it might think about using against South Carolina.

The final score of 45-10 will suggest a walk in the park, and it was for a while as Clemson was up 24-0 early in the second quarter and 31-3 at halftime.

And it certainly ended well, as fourth-string quarterback Chris Denson supplied a jolt to the evening by leading two touchdown drives and rushing for 106 yards and a touchdown on six attempts.

But the check Clemson stroked to the Paladins for this game wasn’t the only cost incurred.

Two important players, defensive end Jahiem Lawson and tight end Olsen Patt-Henry, suffered injuries and needed crutches to get to the locker room.

After offensive linemen Walker Parks and Brayden Jacobs were lost for the season a week earlier at Louisville, the injuries are starting to add up.

Every bit of attention now turns to next Saturday’s noon game in Columbia against a South Carolina team that grabbed its fourth win in a 51-7 smacking of Coastal Carolina.

It’s hard to imagine anything about 2025 being viewed as a positive if Clemson and Swinney can’t beat a coach who many Gamecock fans want to run out of town.

You know a lack of focus and killer instinct is often part of the deal when you face an FCS team.

But this one became too close for comfort after Swinney decided to begin wholesale substitutions.

Even before that point it wasn’t like Clemson was totally mowing down the Paladins. The Tigers rushed for just 77 yards in the first half while averaging 4.5 yards a carry.

Furman went 55 yards in six plays for a touchdown that made it 31-10 late in the third quarter, and then Clemson’s third-stringers went three-and-out to give the ball right back.

The Paladins then commenced moving it again against the defensive backups.

After a short pass and a facemask penalty on Kobe McCloud pushed the ball to the Tigers’ 38-yard line, Swinney had seen enough.

He called timeout and summoned the starters back onto the field.

Furman managed to convert a fourth-and-6 on the starters, and the Paladins came dangerously close to converting a third-and-15 when a receiver got separation on safety Ricardo Jones (the pass was off the mark and incomplete).

Furman settled for a field-goal attempt that missed.

So that was it.

But Swinney was still not happy watching his depth guys get outplayed by Furman.

The message was received by at least one player, that being Denson. The freshman electrified the crowd with his jitterbug running, including a 50-yarder that’s the longest by any Clemson player all season.

Before those back-to-back touchdown drives that closed it, the offense had punted three straight times while totaling 40 yards with Christopher Vizzina and Trent Pearman at the controls

Antonio Williams, who said following the game he would enter the 2026 NFL Draft, as expected, was the star of the day early, hauling in touchdown catches of 35 and 22 yards.

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Klubnik was a little jittery early but finished 9-of-15 for 159 yards before getting his curtain call with 12:15 left in the second quarter.

A while later, you wondered if Klubnik and the offensive starters might be summoned back.

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But Swinney angrily brought back the first-team defense, and that was enough.

Now we get to see if the Tigers have enough to avoid Shane Beamer celebrating at their expense for a third time in four years.

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