Clemson may have mistakenly provided performance-enhancing drugs to players, Tigers coach Dabo Swinney acknowledged to The Post and Courier on Saturday.

Defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, offensive lineman Zach Giella and tight end Braden Galloway failed an NCAA drug test ahead of the College Football Playoff Semifinal against Notre Dame in December and did not play in the postseason after testing positive for ostarine, a banned substance.

“Oh yeah, I mean, there’s a chance that it could come from anything,” Swinney said when asked if it’s possible the players ingested ostarine in a Clemson-issued supplement. “They’re going to test everything and look at everything. And that’s the problem. As you really look at this stuff, it could be a contaminant that came from anything, that was something that was cleared and not a problem, and all of a sudden, it becomes there was something.”

It's been over a month since Clemson appealed the three player suspensions to the NCAA and the university is still awaiting word on how the banned substance made its way to players. Clemson officials still aren't sure how ostarine entered the players' systems.

Swinney told The Post and Courier that the process is out of his hands and that the university’s legal team is still looking into all possibilities, which includes the chance that Clemson gave the players something the athletic department thought was cleared by the NCAA.

“It’s a huge undertaking, and I really have not been in that loop,” Swinney said of the appeal process, via The State. “I’ve gone and seen Dan maybe like a minute here and a minute there over the last several weeks. I now that they’re all working through that.”

Lawrence has entered the 2019 NFL Draft while Galloway and Giella are ineligible to play in games (but can practice) until Clemson's appeal is complete.

“You can research articles, there are a lot of times when things are cleared and end up having a contaminant in it because of where it was processed, the factory it came from, whether there were other things there," Swinney said, according to the Post and Courier. “So there’s a lot of that. There’s a case out there that there was a contaminant at a testing lab. There are lots of different things and the legal people are involved in that.”

According to supplement journal MYNVFI.orgg, "ostarine is a product used to boost muscle growth and prevent muscle wasting, which is a result you would normally expect from steroids. However, Ostarine differs from traditional anabolic steroids in the way it affects your body. Most notably, with Ostarine you can avoid some of the most common unwanted side effects of steroids."