Two New Coordinators Have Notorious Stories To Tell

Dabo Swinney laid out his staff plan at Clemson Monday and just as his promotion to head coach happened in an unconventional way he assigns the role of his offensive coordinator to young assistant Billy Napier, who stepped up during the season and not only took on coaching Tiger quarterbacks but also shared the play-calling duties with Swinney.

That Swinney is going with the yet-to-be-thirtysomething Napier is a dare in itself. The coach indicates he has a gut feeling on Napier and expects him to elevate quickly in the business.

What Swinney hopes Napier can construct out of the Tigers' offense is a unit that can attack both horizontally and vertically. The head coach points out that all of the positive play calling in the world will mean nothing if the offensive line doesn't block better than it did in 2008 when you had several freshmen seeing significant playing time.

Swinney also commented on the addition of defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, a Dillon native who has been in several major programs during his career and now makes the Tigers his latest stop.

Interestingly, the Tigers two coordinators each has also been involved in two of the more notorious plays in recent college football history.

Steele's moment came in 1999 when, in his first season as Baylor's head coach, he was trying to turn around a program that had just four wins combined in the previous two seasons. In an early September game that season (eerily, 9/11/99 to be exact) Steele's homestanding Bears had a 24-21 lead against visiting UNLV and in the closing seconds had the ball inside the UNLV 10 yard line.

All the Bears needed to do was take a knee and the game would end.

Steele opted to run a play and try to add points. But Rebels corner Andre Hilliard jarred the ball loose from Darrell Bush near the goal line. UNLV's Kevin Thomas scooped it and ran 100 yards for the 27-24 victory.

Needless to say, a heartbreaking moment for Steele and his Baylor program. Three years later he was on the move from the Bears but the memory likely lingers as the 10-year anniversary of the UNLV play approaches.

About three years after that moment in Waco, Napier was quarterbacking Furman to what appeared to be a come-from-behind victory at Appalachian State. The Paladins scored a touchdown to take a 15-14 lead with just under 10 seconds remaining. The book says you go for two so that you're up by a field goal.

Napier rolled to his left to throw but his pass to the endzone was intercepted at the four by defensive lineman Josh Jeffries. Jeffries wasn't the fastest player in the world and was caught from behind near the 20-yard line by a Furman offensive lineman. However, he was able to lateral to speedy defensive back Derrick Black who took it the rest of the way for two points for the Mountaineers.

With 7.4 seconds remaining in the game (no time came off the clock as extra point attempts are untimed downs) Appalachian State had taken a 16-15 lead and Furman would have to try to recover an onside kick to get the ball. That attempt was unsuccessful and what appeared to be a gritty road win for the Paladins became a painful loss.

You could probably debate for many hours which current Clemson coach suffered more anguish in his respective dark football moment. If nothing else, they each have a heck of story to compare against the other.