FYI from NYT

Sep 5, 2023, 5:05 PM

Auerbach: Clemson is paying more than ever for Dabo Swinney’s stubborn transfer approach

By Nicole Auerbach
4h ago
124

On Sunday, Florida State announced its return to the top tier of College Football Playoff contenders, beating LSU 45-24 thanks to a roster loaded with key players acquired via the transfer portal. The very next night, a team that has operated at that tier for years while very much trying to avoid using the portal lost to Duke.
Clemson hasn’t adapted to the times, and that’s why this program is slipping from its perch atop the sport. From 2015 to ’19, Dabo Swinney’s program played for four national championships and won two of them. Clemson hasn’t sniffed the CFP since 2020.
The writing has been on the wall for the Tigers since 2021, when the NCAA loosened its transfer rules to allow all undergraduate football players to transfer once and play right away. Swinney has publicly avoided using the transfer portal as much as possible ever since its inception in 2018. He prefers to build his roster through high school recruiting, as most coaches do. But unlike most coaches, Swinney wants to do it exclusively that way, resisting the urge to plug roster holes with outside help that might disrupt the culture.
But for Clemson, that’s not enough

Frankly, it’s not enough for most programs. The early days of the 2023 season have offered countless examples of coaches expertly sifting through the portal and finding the right players at the right positions to boost their current rosters. Deion Sanders did it (albeit in an extreme way) to turn a one-win Colorado team into must-see TV seemingly overnight. Texas State head coach GJ Kinne flipped his roster to pave the way for the Bobcats’ massive upset of Baylor in Week 1. Lane Kiffin has done it to help build up Ole Miss. And Florida State’s Mike Norvell might be the current gold standard for portal usage, finding hidden gems like Jared Verse from Albany and attracting studs like former Michigan State receiver Keon Coleman, who had nine receptions for 122 yards and three touchdowns in his FSU debut. Norvell’s hit rate with transfers has been high for a while now: Florida State had three first-team all-ACC players last season, and all three were transfers. In 2021, seven of its eight All-ACC honorees were transfers.
These are the coaches who see and embrace where college football is in 2023. Swinney does not. He’s learning the hard way that being anti-progress is an organization killer.
This sport is constantly evolving, and the coaches who recognize that and adapt quickly are the ones who thrive. A decade ago, Alabama coach Nick Saban realized that he needed to open up his offense to compete for national titles, and he did just that by hiring Kiffin as offensive coordinator in 2014. “I remember him saying, ‘I feel like our offense is a Lamborghini, but it’s headed off a cliff,’ meaning we’ve got these great players, but are behind the times in what we’re doing,” Kiffin once told ESPN. “So, we needed to change directions.”
Swinney is behind the times, too. But he’s unwilling to change directions. As it turns out, the problem was not simply former Tigers quarterback DJ Uiagalelei — who completed 80 percent of his passes, threw for 239 yards and accounted for five touchdowns in his Oregon State debut on Sunday. The problem was also not simply former offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter, who was fired in January after his unit’s uninspiring performance in 2022. Clemson is behind the times, and Swinney has been told as much for years. Monday night’s loss to Duke, a program that faces academic hurdles when taking transfers but still added multiple starters from the portal this offseason, was the starkest example yet that the portal is a necessary part of roster construction.
There were 363 FBS wide receivers who transferred this offseason and 108 who landed with Power 5 programs. Even adding one might have made a big difference for Clemson on Monday night.
Shaking up the offense by hiring coordinator Garrett Riley is great, but its effect will be muted if Riley won’t have explosive weapons on the perimeter to use like he did at TCU. New starting quarterback Cade Klubnik, a five-star recruit in 2022, won’t reach the heights his Clemson QB predecessors did if the offensive line can’t control the game. The Tigers are recruiting high school players at a higher level than ever, but no matter how good their recruiting class is, it will always take time to get those players ready to compete at the highest level in college football, especially across the offensive line and defensive line. You’re always going to have roster attrition — and, sometimes, you just miss on players. The portal allows coaches to avoid starting from scratch every time that happens to develop a 17- or 18-year-old. You find an experienced player who fills a need, and you plug and play. That is what problem-solving looks like in college football in 2023.

Last November after a win against Tennessee, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart famously touted that the Bulldogs didn’t take any transfers after winning the national championship … and then the Bulldogs went on to win another. That strategy can work when you have a roster overflowing with future NFL players. Clemson clearly doesn’t have that anymore. And for what it’s worth, Smart has taken his fair share of transfers over the course of his tenure, including a starter (Dominic Lovett) and contributor (Rara Thomas) to shore up Georgia’s receiving corps this offseason. Before the 2021 season, Smart added Clemson’s Derion Kendrick, who started for his first title-winning team. Smart wasn’t opposed to taking transfers between the 2021 and 2022 seasons; he just said they didn’t find anyone who fit their roster needs.
“(The transfer portal) is the way of the world,” Smart said this spring. “It’s who handles it and manages it best.”
Note: Handling and managing the portal require actually using it. The coaches and the teams atop the sport right now understand and embrace that, because they know they must.
But Dabo Swinney is stuck in 2017, and his Clemson program appears to be, too. That means their future is more uncertain than it’s ever been.

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I respect Dabo’s philosophy of commitment to those young men commit to us. But we need to begin filling a few critical roster holes from the portal. Dabo’s brand remains strong with recruits, so a Clemson portal offer can still mean something. But I can’t imagine how people think the portal would have changed yesterday’s outcome. We played poorly on both sides of the ball. With the possible exceptions of RB and S, was there any position group that played well?
But the shrill shriekers now screaming for Dabo to do their version of “something”, probably didn’t sit through the post-Danny malaise of the 90’s and the era when Clemson became known for “Bowdening”. Bowdening was real. They just gave it the wrong moniker.
We were a middling program that Dabo built into a top 10 program, by far the most successful run in school history. And he did it from the ground up with hard work, integrity and an innate ability to choose young men who were more than just football players. So the vitriol aimed at Dabo is senseless and infuriating. Dabo is directly responsible for the top-tier status of our program and our most recent national championships. He is not perfect and I can guarantee you that each coordinator and position coach felt Dabo’s wrath today.
So, as disappointing as ONE GAME was, I remain All-In with the full expectation that we will see improvement and another double digit win season. I can’t help but recall a tough early loss at Syracuse that portended a very good year.

FYI from NYT

truth hurts Dabo.***

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Neff is an idiot...I have zero faith in him.***

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it's DELIBERATE PROGRAM NEGLIGENCE at this point

Dabo is becoming a dinosaur. Be progressive or

So

Pretty rational analysis. But based on one game?

ONE game?

Re: Pretty rational analysis. But based on one game?

Re: Pretty rational analysis. But based on one game?

I think everyone knows this but Dabo and the handful of...

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