And he’s certainly no reincarnation of Danny Ford. If anything, he looks more like Tommy West or Red Parker every day.
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It’s been a while since I wrote/ragged on Clemson’s self-inflicted spiral into football irrelevancy. I was contemplating not writing anything at all; Clemson football has been exposed as a big bowl of head-shaking ick and everyone knows it. Even the apologists and excusers and members of the “I like Dabo but...” crowd see it but they are just too ball-less to face it full-frontal because they ignorantly think that to criticize Clemson or, god forbid, Dabo Swinney is akin to blasphemy. But I figured what the hell.
In the beginning when Swinney proclaimed that all Clemson needed was an oil change, tire rotate and balance, whatever it was he said to sell some legitimacy into his head coaching campaign, he clearly implied that it wouldn’t take long or much to put Clemson over the hump. This has clearly been proven to be snake-oil by the former insurance salesman, as since Swinney took over mid ‘08 Clemson has not looked a lot different from Tommy Bowden’s teams in the win-loss columns.
Lopsided losing record (only one win) versus ranked opponents is the tell. If that doesn’t scream same-old same-old I don’t know what does.
And don’t bring up winning the Atlantic last year to justify his hire. They didn’t win it as much as the rest of the division lost it. Clemson fell ass-backward into the ACC title game, period, and it was more due to C.J. Spiller, now with the Buffalo Bills, than Swinney.
And don’t quantify his enormously average to below-average record by conveniently removing his interim season. That his ’08 audition doesn’t count since he was ‘bailing water’. It does in fact count, and it should. If it didn’t count, it would have played no role in his hire. But he was hired because of his water-bailing, so it counts. The moment athletic director Terry Don Phillips said that Swinney's interim period was his audition for a permanent position was the moment it counted. You can’t have it both ways.
Last year Clemson began the season dirtying their diaper, the crown jewel of that poor excuse of football is losing to a putrid Maryland team that finished 2-10. Clemson lost three of their first five but, by definition of inconsistency, inexplicably went on a hot streak won their next six. Again by definition of inconsistency they inexplicably lost the next two, one to a South Carolina team that was on a skid and had a poor offense, the other to a Georgia Tech team in the ACC title game that they should have, by then, known how to beat.
This year will be more of the same at best. After “tuning up” against two patsies, they blew it against an Auburn team they had a 17-3 halftime lead on, and again against Miami, who is another in a long line of warted ACC teams. Not to mention Clemson’s third straight loss being to a North Carolina team that was missing scads of starters. None of these three teams are really good teams. Just because Clemson loses to a team doesn’t make said team good.
Some good “tune-up” games do for Clemson.
And don’t hand me any crap about how Clemson “played hard” and fell short. We heard that refrain for years under Bowden. Five years from now no one’s going to give a crap how Clemson lost. The only thing that will matter is the black and white: whether they actually won or lost. The ends count, not the means, and Clemson is currently perched at 0-3 against teams with a pulse.
Every team has problems. It doesn’t take a beat journalist to validate our belief in this. But the truly great teams overcome their problems and win in spite of them. Clemson, on the other hand, succumbs to them every single time.
But with Clemson, it’s like a weekly musical chairs of Achilles Heels. One week it’s the linebackers. The next week the linebackers do fine but the line skids its pants. The following week the line does fine but the kicking game costs them a win (or tie, in Auburn’s case). If not the kicking game, it’s the passing game led by a broken quarterback. If not the passing game, then turnovers. Then back to the linebackers and the cycle begins again. It’s endless.
It’s pathetic that Clemson’s entire staff has such little control over the team that there is a new obscure, ass-biting problem each week. Good head coaches have a firm, solid grasp of their team, and Swinney clearly doesn’t. Not only has he lost his grasp of the team, but if what I’m hearing is true that more than one player was laughing and joking it up during the final ticks of the clock, I wonder if he’s lost his players. And when a coach loses his players, it’s over. But that may be a stretch right now but it’s the first thing I thought of when I heard about the laughing and joking on the sidelines. Throw in there that over the past few weeks certain coaches have wised-assed to media or fans (Andre Powell, Kevin Steele, Swinney), and you have a coaching staff that not only has no grasp of the team but also is desperate as they can't take hard questions nor provide legitimate solutions.
So, what will be Clemson’s waterloo next time? Special teams coverage? Turnovers again? Or will they (gasp!) actually win? Even if they win, will they look all warted up doing it? I do think Clemson will win. I really don’t know why, I just do, maybe it’s because I haven’t had my Seroquel yet.
To compound this, Swinney seems to be sounding a bit, well, Bowdenish, in that he’s come up with a mantra for losing: “correctable/fixable mistakes”, in hopes of keeping the fans gassed up on false hope.
Funny, Clemson had “correctable mistakes” weeks ago after they lost to Auburn. Were those mistakes corrected before the Miami game? And if they somehow were, what new “correctable mistakes” cropped up that the coaches didn’t anticipate? I direct you to the ‘grasp’ paragraph above.
“Correctable mistakes”. Make note of this Clemson fans; this will be a common catchphrase from Swinney throughout his tenure, just as “oil change” was in his ’08 campaign and “one play away” was for Bowden as now we’re led to believe by Swinney that Clemson is one correction or fix away.
I wonder how long it’ll be before Swinney begins using “fifty percent of all the teams that played Saturday lost”.
“But, but but....Swinney wasn’t the one on the field! This is the players’ fault!” Really, how dumb are you? Are you so stupid to think that it’s not the coaches’ job to prepare the team for play, and then ensure the team plays as prepared? This isn’t the NFL with grown men in their mid-20s to mid-30s who are (physically) mature and being paid millions. These are late-teens to early 20s, and they are not mature enough yet to prepare themselves accordingly. In college, the coaches are crucially responsible for prepping the players, unlike in the NFL. Nebraska coach Bo Pelini once said that when the team wins you credit the players, and when it loses you blame the coaches, and that’s how it’s gotta be. And when a team loses as much as Clemson has, especially against ranked teams, you have to question the legitimacy of Swinney’s hiring.
This all said, this really isn’t a Swinney bashfest. Well, maybe just a little given his penchant for oil changes and correctable mistakes, but the fact is Swinney just took a job offer. Much like one Ken Hatfield a million years ago. Can’t blame Swinney for taking it but that doesn’t exonerate the fact that he’s clearly in over his head. This cluster of a program falls squarely on Phillips, James Barker and the Board, and partially on Katie Hill, the Queen to Phillips’ Sleepy/Dopey combo dwarf. Although they didn’t create this (this foundation was laid out by Max Lennon and Bobby Robinson), Phillips, Barker and Board just built on it. Which is why Swinney is in this pickle to begin with.
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In his post-game interview after the North Carolina debacle Swinney stated, “Sooner or later you’ll bust through.”
Sooner...or later? Given your “oil change” sales pitch, ‘later’ is not an option, coach Swinney. You yourself took that off the table from the beginning. Of course it doesn’t surprise me now you’re using it to save face.
But I do agree that Clemson football is only in need of an oil change to get over the hump. Too bad Swinney is no mechanic.
