The Swinney Era Is Underway

Things certainly went from drabbo to Dabo at Clemson this past Saturday.

There was a new energy about Death Valley and, despite the loss to Georgia Tech, you could clearly see some added intensity. I don’t think this team stopped playing hard for Tommy Bowden. I do think (like many) that it lacked that certain fire that was apparant Saturday.

Now the real test comes for Clemson’s interim coach who’s trying to get the job fulltime. He’ll have two weeks to get the team ready for Boston College with the coaching staff in its current state. In order for him to not fall behind in the chase to keep the job he’s currently in I think the team will have to do the following:

-Win

-Look as physical as Boston College

-Look more intense than BC

Swinney has the reputation of an excellent recruiter going for him already. In the few days between being named head coach and guiding the team against Georgia Tech he showed he has some fire and leadership skills about him as well as creativity with the various policies and procedures he developed.

I think another quality that he showed in the Georgia Tech game, that may be a little underrated, is the adjustments he made on offense at the half that enabled Clemson to score 14 third quarter points to take the lead. Within that quarter, quarterback Cullen Harper began performing with the confidence and poise he had in 2007, the running game showed a pulse for the first time in the game, and Aaron Kelly suddenly became more than a receiver trying to make something out of a bubble screen.

In the coming weeks he’ll have to show that what he knows about Xs and Os is viable enough that he would at least have the credentials and credibility to hire the right coordinators if he were to become the head coach.

He’ll also have to show his team has fully channeled the same toughness he preaches and that his game plan against some pretty tough foes can work from the start of the game until its end.

And Swinney will need to put up more wins than he loses against what suddenly looks like a daunting November schedule of: at BC, at FSU, home to Duke, at UVa., and home to USC.

In their three straight losses, Clemson’s offense has pretty much put its defense in a position where it’s had to to keep the team in games but then make one stop late to secure a win. That group’s been unable to do that. However, the defense has looked like the more cohesive unit compared to the offense. The guy who’s trying to get the top job is running the offense. What’s it going to look like for his chances if that side continues to be perceived as the weak link of the team----even if they do go, say, 3-2 in November----under the guy who’s trying to land the top job? All of the intensity in the world won’t make up for a shoddy won/loss record and the idea that the offense didn’t improve.

Tommy Bowden’s CEO style for both his units may not have been the way to go. But what it did was insure him of some separation from the actual misgivings of the offense and it gave him the ability (or at least the perception) to work as a consultant for the unit, coming in after the fact to lend insight as to what needed to be changed from his perspective with the sterility of not having manufactured what didn’t work to begin with.

In these desperate weeks of trying to save a season and secure a job, Swinney doesn’t have such a luxury.

That’s by his choice, of course, as sitting back and leaving the offense to continue as it was wasn’t an option.

So, while he noted after the game Saturday that he’ll simply work as hard as he can and let those who make the decisions determine if he’s the man for the job long term, in many respects, he actually has a certain control of his own destiny.