Something is horribly, horribly wrong with Clemson football this year. A 7-point season-opening loss to a top-10 LSU was far from eyebrow-raising -- good teams lose to good teams -- but when the Tigers struggled to distance themselves from the Troy Trojans in the following week, anxiety fell on Death Valley.
The following two results confirmed observers' looming dread; losing to Georgia Tech on a last-second field goal and getting stomped by Syracuse was enough to jettison Dabo Swinney's program from the top 25 rankings and into college football obscurity. Their 1-3 start is the worst of Swinney's tenure as head coach. No doubt about it, something has broken in Clemson's football program.
Offering a solution, Clemson's head coach took to the media to set the record straight.
"This is just then a coaching failure, honestly," Swinney accepted. "That's the best way I can say it -- we have just failed as coaches."
"I'm not taking accountability away from the players. They've got accountability in this too. You've got some guys who've got to play better. They're not just on scholarship anymore, some of these guys are paid a lot of money to perform. [...] It's just an absolute coaching failure. I'm not pointing a finger, I'm pointing a thumb."
Swinney is the first to recognize that not all is well with this year's Clemson football team -- believe it, he knows -- and he's accepting responsibility for that. Be it his coaching hires, his personnel decisions, his practice methods, or his on-field scheming, Swinney is determined to find the leak before it sinks the entire season.
Many blame Clemson's downfall to their stubbornness about not utilizing the transfer portal to its full potential. Schools like Alabama, Georgia, Colorado, and Texas Tech have leaned all-in to the modern age of football recruiting, and have seen tremendous dividends from their efforts. Perhaps this season's shortcomings can serve as something of a wake-up call for a Clemson program that, by all appearances, is past its prime.
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