Elliott Excited About 'First-Hand Knowledge' Spiller Offers Clemson

Wednesday's post-practice saw Clemson Tigers' OC Tony Elliott offer his first thoughts of the spring on the RB group and their new coach C.J. Spiller.

C.J. Spiller joining the Clemson staff completed a cycle offensive coordinator Tony Elliott never intended to start.

Elliott moved to assist the tight ends so Spiller could return to Tiger Town as the running backs coach, the same decision that offered Elliott his first coaching opportunity at Furman.

"First and foremost, it was an honor that coach would ask me to move positions so that C.J. could come in," Elliott said. "It's also an opportunity for me to pay back because that similar situation happened to me at Furman. When I was hired at Furman, the receivers coach transitioned to running backs so that I could have an opportunity to come on staff. So it's pretty cool to see how the Lord brought that back on me."

Spiller joins the Clemson staff the year after Travis Etienne's departure, making the competition this spring fierce and the playing time wide open.

"(Spiller) can talk about some things that I may not have personally experienced," Elliott said. "The true preparation process as a running back-I can talk specifically about wideout because that's what I played. I did the best I could to try and teach myself that, but he has first-hand knowledge. He can talk more of the eye discipline; I know what to teach, but I've never done it. It's a little bit different when you've actually done some of those things; you just have a different perspective."

Spiller has made a seemingly automatic impact in the RB Room, and Elliott mentioned how Lyn-J Dixon had reaped the benefit of Spiller's presence in just the first week since practice began.

"Today just was an opportunity," Elliott said. 'We really haven't had pads on but for a couple of days. Today we kind of got out the way and let them bang a little bit. We are just seeing more and more decisiveness in (Dixon's) cuts and trusting the system. C.J. is doing a good job of helping him to transition. We know he's a great perimeter runner, but what I've seen is just a little bit more sense of urgency. Squaring up his pads and trying to do the dirty things so that he can get opportunities to hit the home runs, which we know he's capable of."

Elliott added some final thoughts about the running backs in his last answer of the afternoon, and Kobe Pace's name immediately rolled off Elliott's tongue.

"Kobe is a guy that caught everybody's attention early on," Elliott said. "It was just a situation where there were so many guys that have more knowledge than him. So I see he's going to be a guy who will be pushing Lyn-J at the top."

Pace was the first mentioned, but Elliott was keen to add Spiller has a ton of competition on his hands early in the spring.

"Chez (Mellusi) was starting to come into his own towards the back half of the season with the opportunity that he was getting, so now he's pushing up there at the top," Elliott said. "The great thing is C.J. has an opportunity to kind of set the stage where he wants and make all those guys go and compete. So one thing I do know is there's some competition going on."

Elliott couldn't escape the afternoon without assessing the two early enrollees Will Shipley and Phil Mafah, in their first week of spring practice for the Tigers.

Then today in our work, Phil Mafah, he flashed," Elliott said. "I think everybody's like, 'Man, that's a big guy,' but everything has been controlled. Today we kind of got out the way and let him play man, and he popped a big long run, and you saw that that explosion that he has. You know and Shipley, every time we see that cat man, he's flying around 100 miles an hour. So the best thing is that there's competition there."