Clemson football will be without its offensive coordinator in the Sugar Bowl.
Wednesday afternoon it was revealed that once again, Clemson football would be shorthanded headed into a game in 2020 – this time offensive coordinator Tony Elliott is the one that will be missing in action.
While everyone hopes that Tony will be just fine and early indications are that he would indeed be back for the College Football Playoff national championship, should the Tigers advance, this will be a glance at the near future for head coach Dabo Swinney.
As of this publication, Swinney has not said who will call plays, but most believe it will be longtime quarterback coach and passing game coordinator Brandon Streeter. Obviously, someone would then fill his in-game responsibilities and there is plenty of coaches on staff capable of doing so.
Dabo is much too meticulous to have not had an extensive plan in place should one of the coordinators be in this situation. He has an attention to detail that most people could not imagine and that is a big reason for his success.
Dabo is playing chess against IBM computers while everyone else is playing checkers with grandpa at Cracker Barrel.
The only thing that separates Dabo from every other coach in the country, is his ability to develop and promote assistant coaches. We have seen far too often coaches that have to replace assistants and because they don’t have a development system in place, the outsider hire creates continuity issues, and that sets a program back – see Southern California, LSU, South Carolina, Florida, Florida State, and UGA.
At some point in the near future, Tony Elliott will be gone. He will be the head coach of his own program and this will give Swinney an idea of Streeter is ready to take over the reins of the Clemson football offense and if you ask anyone around the program, there is no doubt that he is.
Unlike Tony, Streeter has a much closer relationship with Lawrence. They are together every day in a way that Elliott cannot being the running backs coach. If there is any coach on this staff that understands exactly how Trevor Lawrence is wired, it Streeter – and if you ask any former player, the coach they are closest to is always their position coach because of the amount of time that they spend together.
The biggest adjustment for Streeter would be not being on the field – though we won’t know for sure until kickoff whether or not Streeter would indeed be up in the box as it’s important for Trevor to have that familiarity on the field as well.
This will potentially be a lot for Streeter to handle, but if he is successful, Dabo will for sure know who the next offensive coordinator of Clemson football is, and that takes a lot of pressure off this staff in the very near future.