Clemson Football change in offensive philosophy about tomorrow as much as today

Clemson Football has had the proverbial embarrassment of riches over the past several years. The NFL talent that has come out of Clemson on the offensive side of the ball made the Tigers a formidable foe for even the best college football programs.

That talent and advantage helped obscure the reality that the Clemson offense had lost most of the innovative edge of the Chad Morris era.

I am not a critic of the decision to simplify the offense when Morris left. I liked his offense during the years of Tajh Boyd, Nuk Hopkins, and Sammy Watkins. I also couldn’t help but notice that Cole Stoudt struggled mightily in Morris’s system but turned in the performance of his career as soon as Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott took over in the Russell Athletic Bowl after Morris left for SMU.

I always thought Stoudt thrived under Elliott and Scott because they created an offensive game plan suited to Stoudt’s talents. Morris ran the Morris offense regardless of whether his players were suited for the system or not. I feel that was his ultimate downfall at Arkansas – he was unable to adapt to his surroundings.

What I failed to understand over the years was just how vanilla the Tiger offense had become. Clemson had quarterbacks like Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence, an incredibly talented running back in Travis Etienne, and receivers like Mike Williams, Hunter Renfrow, and Tee Higgins. Those players made the simple offensive scheme look deadly.

Now that they’re gone, the need to innovate again had become apparent. Many have commented that it would have been a major failure to waste a talent like Cade Klubnik continuing to use an offense that didn’t put him in a position to win.

The Tigers did need to change their offensive perspective for the sake of Klubnik and players like Will Shipley, Antonio Williams, and Jake Briningstool, and fortunately, Dabo Swinney understood that.

I think Swinney also saw the need to change for more than just the immediate future. I think he saw that Clemson would need to stay cutting-edge on offense for many years to come.

It’s great to say that the Tigers need to do a better job of evaluating and recruiting on offense to get the talent back to where it was from 2015 to 2020. Achieving that will be an increasingly difficult task for a program like Clemson in the age of NIL.

Clemson Football isn’t likely to just dominate on offense with superior talent in the NIL era

From time to time, the Tigers will identify 5-star and high 4-star talents that are attracted to the culture of the Clemson program and prioritize that over the lure of NIL money. Those opportunities will be few and far between compared to years past.

Clemson will be able to recruit good players, but the chances of recruiting enough of the generational talent needed to simply be heads & shoulders above their peers on the national stage just aren’t very high.

I think Swinney has come to understand that situation, and as a result, he had no choice but to part ways with Brandon Streeter. He had to bring in someone like Garrett Riley to overhaul the scheme for the long run, even if Riley is only here for a few seasons.

With NIL changing the recruiting landscape, the change in the offense isn’t just about today, but about Clemson’s ability to compete for years to come.