Former Clemson linebacker was kicked off the team. Now he stars for an SEC school
One year after being dismissed from the Clemson football team for an undisclosed violation of team rules, a former Tigers linebacker is starring at a top SEC program.
Former Clemson player TJ Dudley, who is now going by TJ Dottery, has been an every-game starter for Ole Miss at middle linebacker and is the second-leading tackler on a team in contention for a College Football Playoff spot.
Dottery — who transferred to Ole Miss after his dismissal from Clemson and sat out the 2023 regular season because of NCAA rules — has four games of 10-plus tackles this season and has earned an SEC defensive player of the week award.
Ole Miss (8-2, 4-2 SEC) is coming off an upset win against Georgia and rose five spots to No. 11 in Tuesday’s updated College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings.
“He’s been a great player, a great leader,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said of Dottery on Wednesday’s SEC coaches’ teleconference. “Worked extremely hard last year on the scout team. He was on the scout team the whole year until they let him play in the bowl game and they changed one of those rules.”
Dottery, 20, originally committed to Clemson as the nation’s No. 227 overall recruit in the Class of 2022 out of Montgomery Catholic Prep in Alabama.
As a true freshman, he appeared in four games (preserving a redshirt) and played 16 defensive snaps. Dottery played a career-best 13 snaps against UNC in the 2022 ACC championship game and also appeared in the Orange Bowl against Tennessee.
Coach Dabo Swinney said in March 2023 that Dottery “had a chance to be a really good player” for the Tigers as a redshirt freshman that fall.
TJ Dottery’s dismissal from Clemson
On July 19, 2023, though, reports surfaced that Dottery was entering the transfer portal after one season at Clemson. Later that afternoon, a team spokesman told The State the linebacker had been “dismissed for a violation of team rules.”
Heading into the 2023 season, Swinney would not elaborate on why Dottery had been dismissed from the team outside of calling it a “disappointing situation.”
“Just a disappointing situation because he’s a good kid and, man, he had a chance to be a great player for us this year,” Swinney said at the 2023 ACC Kickoff preseason media event. “So that definitely hurts us. ... It’s unfortunate, but we’ve got rules and sometimes it’s just best to get a fresh start. So, wish him well.”
Dottery committed to Ole Miss roughly two weeks after his dismissal from Clemson and subsequent transfer portal entry. But since he’d entered the portal outside of the NCAA’s established portal windows, he was ineligible to play in the regular season.
Dottery (who was at this point still going by TJ Dudley) wasn’t granted an eligibility waiver and worked exclusively as a scout-team player for Ole Miss before the NCAA, as part of a larger ruling on transfer athletes, granted him postseason eligibility.
The linebacker suited up for the Rebels in the 2023 Peach Bowl and had two tackles (one solo) and a quarterback hurry in a 38-25 win over Penn State.
As for 2024?
Said Kiffin, who’s in his fifth season coaching Ole Miss: “He’s been awesome, been a real leader for us and been a big change in our defensive success.”
Dottery (6-foot-1, 225 pounds) has played in nine of 10 games for Ole Miss, starting at middle linebacker and recording 68 total tackles (38 solo). He also has 3.5 tackles for loss, two sacks, four quarterback hurries, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery.
He was named the SEC’s co-defensive player of the week on Nov. 4 after he recorded five tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and a forced fumble (which was recovered by a teammate for a touchdown) in a blowout win at Arkansas.
All of that production has come under a different name. Ole Miss announced in July 2024 that the linebacker had changed his name from TJ Dudley to TJ Dottery and would be listed on the Rebels’ roster as TJ Dottery going forward.
Dottery told reporters in September that he’d changed his last name from Dudley to Dottery to match the last name of his father, Antoine Dottery.
In an October appearance on “The Paul Finebaum Show” last month, Dottery also said the main reason he committed to Ole Miss out of the transfer portal was the “opportunity” he saw for playing time and success at the SEC school in Oxford.
“When I got here, I could tell the direction the program was headed,” said Dottery, who returned to the state of South Carolina and had a season-high 13 tackles in a win at USC in October. “The coaches and the players, they were all bought in and you could just tell it was a good group of guys to be around.”
No. 11 Ole Miss is idle this week and closes with games at Florida and vs. Mississippi State. ESPN’s Football Power Index gives the Rebels a 75.9% chance to win out their remaining schedule and a 62.3% chance to make the 12-team CFP.
This story was originally published November 14, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
