Clemson football: Fifth Tiger leaves the program via the transfer portal

Another Clemson football player hits the transfer portal.

For the fifth time in the last six months, a Clemson football player has entered the transfer portal in order to seek a better opportunity for themselves.

Clemson media and parts of the fan base seem to have an issue with the transfer portal. They believe that kids who come from the portal are only in there because they are problem players when in reality what we see from the former Tigers who have left, they are the exact opposite.

LeAnthony Williams has decided that he wants to seek a better opportunity for himself moving forward – whether it is because of playing time or fit after his fourth year in the program does not matter. Even though his playing time has been limited to just 264 snaps over the last three seasons, his leaving takes yet another experienced secondary member out of a position of need for the Tigers.

Since the start of the 2020 season, Clemson football has now lost five players to the transfer portal. Five-star freshman running back Demarkcus Bowman left in the middle of the season and has signed with Florida.

Defensive linemen Jordan Williams and Nyles Pinckney left after the season and signed with Virginia Tech and Minnesota, respectively and senior linebacker Mike Jones Jr.announced recently he too was leaving, though a destination has not been decided.

That is four experienced guys off of the Clemson football defense that was already embarrassed their last time on the field and now they have to replace players that took a combined 969 snaps on that side of the ball in 2020.

Over the last two years, Clemson football has lost a total of nine guys to the transfer portal. Of those nine guys, six of them were rated as four stars or higher coming out of high school.

We know that head coach Dabo Swinney says he has no need to take a player or two from the portal himself, but no program can lose the type of players Clemson is and stay competitive long term by replacing them on scholarship with walk-on players that won’t actually play accept in mop-up duty against Georgia Tech or Syracuse.

Things are getting interesting in Tiger town and at some point, Dabo is going to have to change or the level of success he has been able to have in Clemson will start to wane.