Dabo Swinney Says Install On Hold For Now

The Clemson coaching staff has tried keeping things as normal as possible during these difficult times, but one thing they haven't been able to work on is the installation of the offensive and defensive packages.

Due to threat of COVID-19, the sports world has been put on an indefinite hold. For college football teams, it came during the middle of spring practice, one of the more critical times of the year.

Fortunately for Clemson, they were one of a handful of teams that started the spring early, and were able to get nine practices in, more than most others.

The spring is when most team put a lot of focus on the installation of offensive and defensive packages. It is an extremely important time for the younger players on the roster, in particular the incoming freshmen who enrolled early. 

This spring is different though. While the coaches are able to use the many facets of technology available to their advantage in trying to keep things as normal as possible, some things they aren't able to do.

"Right now, our conference isn't allowing us to do 'football' meetings," Dabo Swinney said. "We can still send them football stuff."

However, in such uncertain times, it seems not all conferences are playing by the same rules. Swinney is hopeful that is about to change.

"Hopefully we are going to get some clarification on that soon," Swinney said. "So we can still have daily afternoon football meetings. Right now, we are having to push all the football stuff to them on a non-required basis. Hopefully that's going to change because I know some conferences are allowing their coaches to do that. So working through that."

While the coaches may not be able to work on any installations at the moment, there are still many things they can work on. Swinney says they will use the extra time wisely, and get as much done as they possibly can.

"From a coaching standpoint, we got a lot that we can do," Swinney said. "We are having offensive staff meetings, defensive staff meetings, just as if we were in a room talking together about stuff we want to get done. Our summer plan, our pre-scouting for fall, a lot of our summer projects that we work on as coaches individually, we've got a little more time to do that right now. We've talked about every single player individually and what their situation is."