Dabo Swinney and Clemson Look Outdated

The embarrassing loss to unranked Duke is the latest example of how far this once mighty program has fallen.

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where fields have already been stormed in Laramie and Durham:

First Quarter: Deion Sanders, Colorado Seize the Moment

SECOND QUARTER: HERE LIES CLEMSON

It’s been an epic run for the Clemson Tigers (11) since 2015: two national championships, six College Football Playoff berths, seven Atlantic Coast Conference championships. It is also now showing every sign of being over.

The last vestige of Clemson’s heavyweight aura was buried in a blue field storm of Duke (12) students Monday night, capping a stunning, 28–7 defrocking of the nation’s ninth-ranked team. Duke has come a million miles in a short amount of time under second-year coach Mike Elko (13), with a group of defensive thumpers and a high-level quarterback and just enough skill talent, but this was a sobering sign of the times for the longtime kingpin of the ACC. Fact is, Duke didn’t even play that well, making an array of mistakes—and still won by three touchdowns.

Dabo’s Tigers have not looked like their usual dominant selves in quite some time :: Ken Ruinard/USA TODAY Sports

Dabo Swinney’s team now really does look like Little Ol’ Clemson, to use the coach’s tongue-in-cheek phrase for a program that grew into a monster. A man who has been resistant to change is having it forced upon him, in the form of being shoved off the top perch in the ACC and out of the top 10. Swinney has not embraced the transfer portal, sounded the alarm about the advent of NIL and for many years promoted from within instead of seeking out new ideas. Now a guy who went 79–7 from 2015 to ’20 is 21–7 since then, with four losses in the last seven games—and three of those four defeats have been thumpings, by margins of 21, 17 and 21 points.

Beyond the wins and losses, the quality of play is shockingly poor on the offensive side of the ball—and Swinney can’t find a way to fix what has become a chronic ailment. Deion Sanders’s hastily reconstructed Colorado offense that is relying on FCS transfers is light-years ahead of Clemson’s.

Since Trevor Lawrence left campus after the 2020 season, the Tigers have churned through coordinators and quarterbacks and skill players—all of them highly paid or highly rated—without improvement. From Tony Elliott to Brandon Streeter to big-dollar new hire Garrett Riley (14), the coordinators haven’t improved the product. From DJ Uiagalelei (15) to current starter Cade Klubnik (16), the five-star prospects become startlingly mundane once they move into the starting lineup. (Uiagalelei, who transferred to Oregon State, tellingly produced the highest single-game pass-efficiency mark of his career Sunday for the Beavers.) And the receiving corps sure doesn’t have game breakers like Tee Higgins, Justyn Ross, Hunter Renfrow, Amari Rodgers and Mike Williams.

They are giving away the franchise one pedestrian performance at a time, with the bottom dropping out in the Labor Day showcase game to end the first full week of this 2023 season.

From 2015 to ’20, Clemson averaged 40.9 points per game. Since then: 29.8, including the seven-point debacle in Durham. It was the Tigers’ fewest points in an ACC game since 2014. For that to happen against Duke, one of the historic doormats of the league, adds insult to injury. This was the Blue Devils’ largest margin of victory over Clemson since 1936.

All the Tigers’ offensive shortcomings were on display in Wallace Wade Stadium. It was so bad their lone scoring drive of the night went all of 18 yards after a muffed Duke punt.

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Monday night marked Duke’s largest margin of victory vs. Clemson since 1936 :: Ken Ruinard/USA TODAY Sports

The passing game has been bereft of pop for three seasons. In 2021, Clemson was 119th nationally in yards per pass attempt at 6.0; last year it scantly improved to 92nd at 6.8. Against Duke the Tigers averaged a sickly 4.9 yards per attempt and just 7.7 yards per completion, with no completion longer than 21 yards.

Monday night also was the seventh time in the last eight games Clemson has lost more turnovers than it has gained, with a 3–4 record in those games. Two of the Tigers’ three turnovers were completely self-inflicted: Klubnik fumbling a zone-read mesh point with his running back, then Will Shipley letting a pass go through his hands to a Blue Devils defender for an interception.

Those were among a riotous run of malfunctions in the second half, during which Clemson somehow never punted but also never scored. There were two fumbles in the red zone; two missed field goals (one of which was blocked, while the other might have been deflected but appeared to be doomed to miss before that); and a stupefying Klubnik slide short of the first-down marker on fourth down. The Tigers were neither clutch nor smart.

The schedule provides two weeks for Swinney to circle the wagons and get this going in the right direction, with Charleston Southern and Florida Atlantic on tap. But then Florida State visits Death Valley on Sept. 23, and that could get ugly if the Seminoles who performed in Orlando on Sunday show up for that one and the Tigers aren’t vastly better than they were Monday.

Swinney has had to be dragged into the modern era of college football in a number of ways. It’s usually better to embrace change than to face it from an adapt-or-perish position. Clemson, which stood alongside Alabama for years atop the nation, now looks outdated and in danger of being left behind.

OTHER SOUTHERN COMEUPPANCES

It wasn’t just Clemson; the mighty Southeastern Conference took a few punches to the face in Week 1 as well. The league played four power-conference opponents and went 1–3, with the losses all by 13 points or more. Assessing the flops:

Florida (17) was the worst SEC offender, losing 24–11 to a Utah team missing its heart-and-soul quarterback and standout tight end. The Gators looked like they spent the offseason doing something other than preparing for a quality opponent, bumbling on special teams and committing errors at critical times. Quarterback Graham Mertz is who he was at Wisconsin, which means the Gators have to develop a running game and execute in key situations. How did that go in Salt Lake City? Florida ran for 13 yards, which ranks 131st nationally, and didn’t break a run longer than nine yards. The Gators also converted one of 13 third downs, a 7.7% success rate that ranks last in the nation.

South Carolina’s offensive line could not keep Rattler clean vs. UNC :: Jim Dedmon/USA TODAY Sports

South Carolina (18) looked like it was facing an NFL pass rush in a 31–17 loss to North Carolina, surrendering nine sacks to a team that had a total of 17 in 14 games last season. Kudos to the Tar Heels for improving in that area, but the Gamecocks’ inability to adjust was mystifying. Whatever the reason—bad up front, quarterback Spencer Rattler not reading the defense, new coordinator Dowell Loggains melting down—that was a step back for a program that came into the season feeling good about itself.

(Also: The Clemson–South Carolina rivalry game at season’s end has immediately been reduced to rubble.)

LSU (19) flagrantly folded in the second half against Florida State, exposing weaknesses in the secondary and raising questions about fortitude. The Tigers looked like they stopped competing after falling behind by two scores against a team that was feeling the moment. Brian Kelly and his staff have to figure out the best role for linebacker Harold Perkins, an incredibly fast and explosive athlete who spent most of last season as a pass rusher. He was moved inside this year and made minimal impact against the Seminoles with two solo tackles—but truth be told, he was hit-and-miss last year as a freshman rush end. Perkins’s four sacks against Arkansas skewed perception a bit: He had a total of 4.5 sacks in LSU’s other 13 games and had eight games with two or fewer solo tackles.

And even though Georgia (20) rolled uneventfully past Tennessee Martin, the Bulldogs managed to create yet another headline off the field. Football staffer Jarvis Jones became the latest person with the program to be arrested for dangerous driving, following at least 12 players who have been cited for moving violations since Georgia’s national championship in early January. The program has shown no ability to learn from tragic consequences after a player and staff member were killed in a high-speed crash on the night the school celebrated its most recent title.

“We’re doing more to prevent speeding than anyone in the country,” coach Kirby Smart said during the summer. Whatever they’re doing is a failure.