Why Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney Is Sinking Fast

WHY CLEMSON COACH DABO SWINNEY IS SINKING FAST – August 31, 2024 — It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t close. And most indicting of all for Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, it was rather predictable.

In a result that shocked nobody, Georgia took Clemson to the woodshed on opening day, demolishing the Tigers 34-3 in a result that wasn’t even as close as the final score indicated. Georgia more than doubled Clemson’s yardage, and once the Bulldogs asserted themselves, the game was over. The Bulldogs allowed the Tigers to hang around for a half while they were getting their sea legs under them, but once Georgia was established, there was never a sense that Clemson was capable of coming back.

Related: Best Futures Bets in the ACC

And that’s another sign of just how and why the Tigers have regressed under Swinney. Losing to Georgia is certainly no shame; Smart has built a monster of a program in Athens. But Clemson wasn’t even close, and this isn’t the first time this has happened to the Tigers. Last year, Clemson got manhandled in the season opener by Duke. After a 4-4 start, Swinney famously said to buy stock now in Clemson, and seemingly backed up his boast with five straight wins. But after that showing against Georgia…let’s hope you sold your shares in the Tigers while the market was still hot for them.

Here’s a dive into why Clemson coach Dabo Swinney is sinking and isn’t going to right the ship without serious changes.

Swinney Refuses to Use the Transfer Portal

The whispers started with the Duke game last year. Swinney famously refuses to use the transfer portal, taking only walk-ons as transfers. Out of 134 FBS programs, four didn’t take a transfer in 2024: Army, Navy, Air Force and Clemson. Instead, Swinney takes only high school players and JUCO graduates, the way recruiting used to be. He wants to focus on chemistry, and he doesn’t want transfers to upset it.

It’s an admirable approach, but it’s similar to what didn’t work for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke 20 years ago. After the 2004 season, Krzyzewski lost Luol Deng to the NBA after one year and Shaun Livingston to the NBA before he ever set foot on campus. And Coach K decided he was done recruiting the best of the best, because those players just left early for the NBA. As college basketball embraced one-and-dones, Krzyzewski decided he wanted to coach slightly less talented players who he could teach over three or four years.

Related: Clemson vs. Georgia Pick and Prediction

The results were pretty predictable. Duke didn’t get further than the Sweet 16 over the next five years and got shoved around by lower seeds. And then Krzyzewski changed his approach, realizing he’d either be coaching the best players or coaching against them for a year.  Duke returned to the top of the sport, even winning a fifth national title with Krzyzewski fully embracing the change in his sport.

Swinney refuses to embrace the changes caused by the portal, and Clemson is paying the price. Interestingly enough, an ideal model for using the portal stood opposite him in Atlanta. Georgia and Kirby Smart prefer to build with high school players over transfers. But Smart isn’t wedded to that ideal. When the Bulldogs have holes in their roster, he doesn’t wait for help to show up from high school. He goes out and gets what he needs from the portal to supplement what he already has.

Nobody is asking Swinney to emulate Deion Sanders and build a roster through the portal. Colorado has its own issues, and Swinney is right to avoid that strategy. But he’s getting no prizes for ignoring obvious solutions when they’re available. Adding a couple transfers here and there makes the difference between Clemson being a championship team and being just a decent program.

Watson and Lawrence Papered Over the Cracks

A good quarterback can make an average coach look great. A good example came from the Indiana program I watched on Saturday. A few years ago, Tom Allen seemed to have Indiana turning a corner. The Hoosiers went to back-to-back bowl games and reached No. 7 nationally during the COVID year, and Allen was rewarded with a lucrative contract extension. Following that extension, Allen went 9-27, and he’s now an assistant at Penn State. It turned out Michael Penix Jr. was carrying that team.

Swinney’s Clemson appears to be similar. Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence were so dominant at the college level that Clemson was able to do anything it wanted. The year before Watson arrived, Clemson was a good program but not a great one. After Watson’s freshman season, Clemson went 46-3 in the ACC over the next six years and won two national titles. And that’s because Watson and Lawrence were both NFL-caliber quarterbacks who made their teammates better. That can cover up a lot of issues for a program because every defense has to game-plan for the quarterback, and a good one makes so many more things possible.

Youth Doesn’t Develop

Here’s the thing about Watson and Lawrence: they aren’t the only big signings Swinney has had at quarterback. DJ Uiagalelei and Cade Klubnik were both five-star prospects at the position, and they were supposed to be the next ones at Clemson to make the offense so hard to stop. Instead, neither has panned out. Uiagalelei is on his third team at ACC rival Florida State, and Klubnik still isn’t the type of quarterback who can carry a team to victory.

One of two things is true here. Either Swinney isn’t making the right decisions in recruiting, or he’s doing a poor job of developing talent once it gets to Clemson. Uiagalelei and Klubnik have not turned into top quarterbacks, and Kelly Bryant didn’t either. That’s two stars and three average college players out of Swinney’s past five quarterbacks. That’s not good enough.

Where Does This Lead?

Swinney has had a brilliant run at Clemson. But it’s hard to see him getting back on college football’s big stage without some changes in his roster building. It’s helped the Tigers that for much of the Watson-Lawrence era, Florida State suffered through inept leadership. It was no coincidence that Clemson’s rise began at the same time as the Seminoles’ decline. But Florida State appears to now have the right leader in Mike Norvell, and the rest of the ACC is catching up to Clemson.

And the reason for the latter is because they’re using all the tools available and Clemson is not. If another ACC team makes a mistake in recruiting, they go fix it by getting a developed player. If Swinney makes that same mistake, well, too bad for the next two seasons. It’s an approach that simply doesn’t work, not when everyone else is playing by different standards. And eventually, one of three things will happen. Either Swinney’s going to make a change in his roster building, Clemson will change its goals as a program or Clemson will change its coach.