Five days ago, Clemson football's 2026 recruiting class was modest, sitting somewhere between the 30-40-range nationally in terms of team rankings.
The Tigers had just a handful of commitments and all were from three-star prospects. It wasn't a bad early haul, but it wasn't up to the standards that Dabo Swinney set for the program about a decade ago. He is used to landing top-20, top-10, and even top-five classes, but his 2026 group was off to a bit of a slow start.
That has since changed -- drastically.
Over the weekend, he landed five four-star commitments and then he landed a three-star cornerback on Monday that carried over the momentum from the weekend.
That would probably be it this week, right? Wrong.
On Tuesday morning, the Tigers landed four-star safety Kaden Gebhardt who chose Clemson over the likes of Penn State and Ohio State. He had June official visits set to each of those schools but I'd be shocked to see those still take place. Gebhardt is set to take an official visit to Clemson to kick off official visit season on May 30.
The writing was on the wall for this recruitment as Clemson was receiving 247Sports Crystal Balls to land Gebhardt on Monday and it didn't tak
Clemson's 2026 recruiting class is now up to 12 commitments following the flurry of pledges from the likes of Adam Guthrie, Chancellor Barclay, Connor Salmin, Naeem Burroughs, Grant Wise, and Marcell Gipson over the past five days. Gebhardt joins a talented group.
This is also the second time in the past five days that Clemson beat out a four-star recruit from Ohio State's backyard in which the Buckeyes and Penn State Nittany Lions were after.
Elite stretch here for Dabo.