Since Clemson’s Labor Day victory over Georgia Tech, the conversation within Tiger Nation has been heavy and polarizing. The sports talk community nationally has been talking about Clemson football, too.
Much of the conversation revolves around the quarterbacks specifically, and then more broadly the offense. The positive conversation about the defense and special teams, while existing, has unfortunately been drowned out by the (sometimes heated) conversation about offense.
Yours truly hasn’t held back my opinions. Many of you haven’t held back either. I have received some support from Clemson fans and have also heard from the “How dare you question Dabo!!!” crowd too.
For the record, I respect Dabo and I am fully aware of his successes. I consider him the 2nd best head coach in college football. I simply don’t consider him infallible. He’s a great coach, but he’s made his share of mistakes too.
Some of those mistakes involved hires he made early in his tenure. We’ve seen what Billy Napier has been doing for a few years at Louisiana, and his early success at Florida. Coach Swinney deserves credit for having the foresight to see Napier’s talents, even if he did make the call to promote him to offensive coordinator a little too soon.
Swinney made a mistake. He owned it and made the hard decision to part ways with Napier.
Kevin Steele was a very experienced defensive coordinator who had experience as a head coach at Baylor. It made perfect sense for Swinney to make him his defensive coordinator.
After the 2012 Orange Bowl when Clemson had been embarrassed by the West Virginia Mountaineers, Swinney made the decision to part ways with Steele. He had made a mistake retaining Steele & he owned it.
Following those two decisions, Coach Swinney made hires that have been praised by almost everyone. He hired Chad Morris to replace Napier, and Clemson’s offense took off. He hired Brent Venables to replace Steele, and just a few years later the defense was as good as any other defense in the country. When Morris left, he promoted Jeff Scott and Tony Elliott, and the offense took another step forward.
Swinney was given credit for having the insight to make those hires. They weren’t slam dunks. Morris’s biggest job to that point was a single season as the OC at Tulsa. Venables was essentially pushed out and replaced by Bob Stoop’s brother because the fanbase blamed BV for the decline of the Sooner defense (whether they want to admit that now or not). Anyone nationally who knew who Elliott or Scott were when they got promoted were probably fibbing.
When Swinney promoted Brandon Streeter and Wes Goodwin to coordinator positions this past offseason, it was surprising to everyone, including most Clemson fans. It didn’t take long for Clemson Nation, myself included, to get onboard with the decision, partly because Swinney sold it well, but also because Swinney has made more good hires in his tenure than bad.
While Clemson scored 41 points on Georgia Tech this past weekend, it took quite a while for the Tiger’s to pull away, and the offense was significantly assisted by great special teams plays that twice gave them a short field. The offense continued last season’s trend of not being able to sustain drives with any consistency.
As I said earlier, much of the conversation about the offense centered on the quarterbacks, but the guys from the Cover 3 Podcast had a different take on their 9/7 episode.
They did discuss the quarterbacks, but they also criticized the play calling and the lack of experience on the offensive coaching staff. In addition to Streeter being in his first season as OC, the other four offensive assistants – CJ Spiller, Thomas Austin, Tyler Grisham & Kyle Richardson – have a combined three seasons of coaching experience at Clemson, and only five seasons in college football total.
From Bud Elliott:
"“I just think Clemson’s offense doesn’t look all that well coached. You know, honestly guys, I thought the defensive internal promotion made a ton of sense but imagine, “Hey like, ok, we’ve got an opening here at offensive coordinator.” “Hey, I coached DJ last year!” “Alright, you’re hired!” What? I mean that, you’re Clemson! I thought they could have used from fresh blood there. I know Dabo likes to reward the loyalty, but their offensive line looked poor, their receivers weren’t really getting that wide open. Did they looked well coached to you?”"
We can nitpick some parts of that discussion. National guys will never understand the level of detail that people focused on a specific program, but that doesn’t devalue their perspective. Elliott and Fornelli aren’t hacks – they have built careers being perceptive and (usually) right more often than wrong.
The pushback I would offer here? First, anyone who was being objective understood that there were going to be some growing pains this season with the new hires, on both offense and defense. I think if Swinney wasn’t willing to work with that limitation, he would have reached outside the staff for assistants with more experience. Was that decision a mistake? Maybe, but only time will tell.
Second, we know Elliott’s description of Streeter’s promotion is surface level analysis. Yes, Streeter coached Uiagalelei in 2021. His resume also includes coaching Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence, two first round NFL draft picks. He also coached Kelly Bryant well enough to lead Clemson to a #1 seed in the 2017 playoffs. I think Elliott was trying to be entertaining there, albeit at the cost of the integrity of his analysis. It was a bad take. A very bad take.
Did the offense look any better last year when Elliott was in charge? No, it didn’t. This situation existed well before Streeter, Richardson & Austin were promoted. It was created under Elliott’s leadership.
Since Clemson’s Labor Day victory over Georgia Tech, Tiger fans and the national sports talk community has been talking about Clemson football
I don’t think Swinney is oblivious to the risk he took when he made the hires we have referenced. I think he puts more value in someone who knows exactly how he wants the staff to operate than in someone who has more experience working for other coaches at other schools. I think Swinney values Austin’s experience as the offensive line coach at Georgia State, but I think he put a higher value on Austin’s experience working as an analyst for Clemson.
Anyone who has actually opened up the articles I’ve written in the last few days (which I am surmising accounts for less than 30% of the people who have run their mouths about them) knows I have no problem being critical of coaches, players, trainers, ground crew, mascots or anyone else who have had more than enough opportunity to prove they deserve the spots they have on the team and aren’t living up to expectations.
That isn’t the case here. It is fair to mention some of them were a part of last season’s staff, but it is the first year for this offensive staff with Streeter in charge, with Richardson coordinating the passing game and Austin supervising the line. This offensive staff is a work in progress.
The defensive staff is a work in progress too. It just isn’t as easy to see because the talent on that side of the ball can mask deficiencies. I don’t like to think about it, but we will probably see growing pains on defense too as the season progresses.
I understand why national pundits would question Coach Swinney’s coaching hires, but I don’t think he is unaware that he took some risks. I think he knows full well that the only thing that will convince everyone will be success. Fortunately, that probably is in sync with his goals.