What will Dabo Swinney vs. Jimbo Fisher round 9 hold?

Clemson is traveling to College Station during Week 2 to take on the Texas A&M Aggies. The matchup itself is rare — its just the fifth time these two are meeting — but these two head coaches know each other pretty well.

Dabo Swinney of course has been at Clemson since 2008, whereas Jimbo Fisher just arrived at TAMU. However, thanks to his previous 15 years at Florida State, these two are quite familiar with one another.

When they were at FSU and Clemson, they drew each others’ teams every season inside the ACC Atlantic. Overall, the two head coaches are actually tied against each other. Swinney has won the last three matchups, winning big last season in Tallahassee:

“We’ll see him next year if he is (at Texas A&M),” Swinney said via Greenville News last December when he was told Fisher was reportedly leaving FSU for the TAMU job, whose team will play the Aggies each of the next two seasons. “I can’t get rid of him.”

Combined, they’ve won two national titles, seven ACC Championships won, and combined average winning percentages of 77.9 percent. And they’re two out of four active head coaches who have won a national title, sharing that with Alabama’s Nick Saban and Ohio State’s Urban Meyer.

“Dabo, and his players, he’s done a great job,” FIsher said last season via TigerNet.com. “He’s a great coach. I felt this all along, even when we were winning those games, they were a tremendous program. We were just fortunate enough to make it one more play. And lately, the last few years, they made the one more play. It’s kind of nip and tuck.”

“Even when they have not won, Jimbo Fisher’s teams have been a thorn in the side of Dabo Swinney’s Tigers,” Tomahawk Nation’s Bud Elliott says. “Fisher owns the only blowout win in their eight-game history, coming 51-14 in 2013 over a top-five Clemson team in Death Valley. And in a very weird quirk, he has had to face Clemson four of the eight times with his backup QB!”

Time to play devil’s advocate here — if Dabo hadn’t beaten Fisher three times in a row from 2015-17, would still be in Tallahassee? Sure, the abysmal season last year in Tallahassee didn’t help, and Fisher has hinted that an offer of $75 million guaranteed is pretty hard to pass up. But Dabo’s dominance over FSU in recent years could be a small factor in Fisher’s exit from Tallahassee.

Since 2010, these two coaches’ teams have gone to 15 bowl games, as well as three College Football Playoff games and three national title games.

If this game is anything like the Clemson-FSU ones in years past, we could be in for a treat come Week 2. Good Bull Hunting suggests that Fisher’s A&M offense might surprise Clemson’s defense a bit:

This one is a bit subjective, but I do think A&M is in a slightly favorable position here. It’s well-documented that both coaches are very familiar with each other, having been in the same conference for the last eight years. They both know what the other will try to do.

That said, Fisher and the Aggies at least have a little element of surprise working in their favor, as they brought in Darrell Dickey to coordinate the offense. Yes, it’s still Jimbo’s offense, but Dickey could be adding in any number of subtle wrinkles that Clemson won’t necessarily be prepared for.

These are two of college football’s elite coaches, so the reasonable expectation is that both teams look prepared and well-coached and neither coach gets caught off guard by anything. But if ever a team was in a good spot to pull off an upset, I’d say it’s A&M.

The Tigers are currently a 13.5-point favorite.