Clemson Football: No, Dabo Swinney wasn’t classless vs. FSU
Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney has come under criticism for how he handled a couple of situations during the Florida State blowout.
Dabo Swinney has come under criticism for how he handled a specific situation during the Clemson football team’s victory over Florida State Saturday afternoon.
The Tigers blew out the Seminoles, winning by a final score of 45-14. Clemson was in control from start-to-finish and never looked back.
Before the end of the first half, Clemson had a 28-0 lead. The Tigers sent out BT Potter to kick a chip shot field goal from inside the 10-yard line and he missed. As Potter came back to the sideline, he was absolutely lit up by Swinney. Because of the way Swinney yelled at his kicker, many analysts and even former Gamecock kicker Elliott Fry scrutinized him.
https://twitter.com/FTBeard11/status/1183128458638942208?s=20
Despite what people want to say, there’s nothing wrong with how Swinney handled that situation.
It wasn’t just that Potter missed the chip shot field goal, it was the fact that he was late and wasn’t prepared to kick a field goal. Swinney knows that Clemson football needs a solid place-kicker and this isn’t the first time that Potter has missed an easy field goal attempt.
Potter is more than capable of hitting that field goal. During practice, he would hit that 10-out-of-10 times. This wasn’t about his lack of ability. This was about a lack of focus.
Swinney’s fiery rant at his kicker had to do with that whole ‘Best is the Standard‘ mission that the Clemson football program lives by. It had nothing to do with the current score or outcome of the game. It had to do with the fact that this is a scholarship player who is supposed to be a starter sleep-walking through his opportunity to make an impact on a game or in the program.
This wasn’t a short-term mindset. This was about the long-term.
Outside of the Potter incident, many forget the classiness that Dabo Swinney showed to Florida State.
The Tigers could’ve easily put up 70 points on the Seminoles if they wanted to. There was nothing Florida State could do to stop Clemson and if Swinney wanted to, he could’ve made the score much more embarrassing for the Seminoles. I guarantee you that Nick Saban wouldn’t have let up off the gas pedal or taken his starters out of the game at the point that Dabo Swinney did.
Instead, Swinney chose to build depth and allow younger guys an opportunity to get in the game and gain experience.
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During a week where the entire country has been looking for anything to criticize Clemson football, it certainly would’ve been understandable for Dabo Swinney to run up the score- especially considering this is Florida State [the rival who ran up the score for a decade against the Tigers in the 1990s and beat Clemson 51-14 in 2013 in Death Valley]. But, he didn’t.
Swinney showed a commitment to building the Clemson football program rather than settling for style points.