It’s that time of year again. The anticipation of a new college football season for Clemson football when July slowly begins to end and August begins.
It begins with Clemson Media Day, when local media was able to listen to head coach Dabo Swinney’s debrief from the spring and summer offseason, addressing what has been done to fix problems of years past and who he would like the step up come August 31.
For Swinney though, the comeback is a time of year that his staff loves.
“We love this time of year,” he said. “We start over in January, that’s just what we do. But it all builds to this, everything builds to getting back on the field. Everything . .there’s a lot that goes into getting to this point, and I appreciate the work that has been put in by our staff and, especially, our players.”
One of the biggest focuses for Swinney throughout the past seven months has been the fixes on offense, where he looks for a change in performances under the second season with offensive coordinator Garrett Riley.
“Offensively, for us, I think the biggest thing is just, Year 2, making a big jump with Garrett coming in last year. Obviously, we didn’t have everything at our disposal [and] we had some injuries and things like that.”
One of those injured players was redshirt sophomore Antonio Williams, who battled various injuries that saw him only play in four games last season, activating his medical redshirt.
Throughout the adversity of coming off an injury, Swinney says that one of the biggest changes has been his maturity.
“He has grown and matured in who he is today, compared to who he was when he got here, he’s not even close,” he’s detailed. “He has become a leader, his work ethic [and] his spring practice, his practice habits. His overall development, I am really proud of.”
Dabo Swinney
While quarterback Cade Klubnik didn’t fight an injury, like Williams, Clemson’s starting signal caller has also seen an improvement in many aspects of the game, which is something Swinney and his staff have enjoyed watching throughout the offseason. The only thing left is execution.
“We don’t put a lot on the spring game, but we evaluate him on what we have seen each and every day,” Swinney said. “Even the summer, a part of it. In our eyes, he has taken the next step that we need to see to this point. Now, it has to go out on the field.”
The patience that the head coach has had in his quarterback is something many Clemson fans have noticed throughout last season. Swinney touched on that while speaking to the media, calling football a “developmental game”.
“We are just so quick to crucify people, if you will, if they are not some ‘Johnny All American’ the first time they step on the field,” he explained. “If that was the standard, for especially, a quarterback, there’s some of the best quarterbacks that have played college football, and even the NFL, [that] would have never happened.”
Red zone offense has been another focus throughout the break. The team finished 118th in red zone offense a season ago, with turnovers and failure to capitalize being the two main factors in a .733 percentage on their 60 red zone trips.
“We have to improve in the red zone scoring area and then our pass offense has to take a big step forward for us this year,” Swinney said. “That was a big area for us to emphasize defensively last year, and we took a big step forward. Hopefully, we can do that on the offensive side and I think health, availability and depth in our skill positions will be a big part of that.”
In terms of the offensive line, the Clemson head coach sees “really good experience there, for the first time in a while.”
While, defensively, there was a lot that was impressive, Swinney’s main goal over the offseason was the prevention of red zone scoring. The Tigers finished 63rd in red zone defense last season, holding a .828 percentage.
What stands out from other schools in this statistic is the amount of trips their opponents have taken, with only 29 red zone trips by opponents all season. The other schools around Clemson in their respective positions ranged from 39 to 56 trips.
“Not many people got to the red zone a lot, but when we did, we gave up too many touchdowns in that area,” Swinney added. “That’s been a big emphasis for us in the offseason.”
On special teams, the biggest issue last season was field goal percentage, especially with the loss of Jonathan Weitz. Between redshirt sophomore Robert Gunn III and true freshman Nolan Hauser, Swinney wants to see better results on the kicking side of the game.
“Special teams [is] kicking competition,” he said. Obviously, the No. 1 thing for us is that we have to get better at field goals. We have tried to address that and hope that we have great competition there.”
In addition, preventing big returns and blocks are two other things that he would like to see the Tigers improve on, emphasizing protection throughout the offseason.
Overall, Swinney said multiple times in his press conference that the team needs to be “great” instead of “good” which has outlined the last three seasons of Clemson football. Headlined by his “Best is the Standard” motto throughout his Tiger tenure, the fixes of last season’s woes could see the team go back to the College Football playoff for the first time since the 2020/2021 season.
“These last three years in this so-called ‘horrible [and] terrible’ era of Clemson football, we have been good but we haven’t been great,” he said. “We’ve won more games in the last three years than 126 of the 134 Division 1 teams. That’s 94th percentile. I think we would all say that is good, that’s an A. But to get an A+, we have to be great.”
“There’s a lot that has to go into it, and we are excited to get another opportunity,” he also added optimistically.
Despite many different factors defining a football team, Clemson fans will be hopeful that Swinney and his team are prepared in a few weeks for the Bulldogs in August, with hopes to shock the world and put Clemson back on top of the college football totem pole.
