Dabo Swinney has been the head coach of the Clemson Tigers since 2009. During his tenure, the program has had its glory days, winning two of its three national titles under the 56-year-old head coach.
But that magic that Swinney once brought to the Tigers no longer exists. They have had a terrible run in the last five years, missing the ACC title game and College Football Playoff four times.
While Swinney is still actively trying to get his team back on track for next year, the 7-6 record this year isn’t going to be easy to forget. On a recent episode of Josh Pate’s College Football Show, the analyst gave Swinney and the Tigers a harsh reality check.
The popular opinion on Swinney right now is that he is no longer the right man for the job. Pate stated that while college football has changed all around Swinney, the head coach hasn’t been able to adapt to the rapid changes.
At the beginning of the season, Pate was expecting the Tigers to have one good run before the program goes into major rebuilding. But the season has proved that Clemson needs immediate changes.
“I don’t feel good about it at all as it relates to Clemson being a national title contender, which they should be,” Pate said. “There’s no excuse why they can’t be. They got really, really good players there. They’ve got access to really good talent. They got all the advantage in the world. Some of it they choose not to partake in, which is the call of the head coach there.”
Pate said that the program has been spiraling down for years, and while the result might be shocking to some, those who kept track of Clemson over the years knew it was bound to happen.
Dabo Swinney Fired His Offensive Coordinator
What do you do when you’ve ended the season 7-6 with a 12-point loss in the Pinstripe Bowl against a team that had the same record in the season? Any head coach or program would look for flaws, fire people who were responsible for it, and start to rebuild.
That’s exactly what Swinney is doing now. The Tigers averaged 27.2 points and were ranked 70th in the FBS. They breached the 30-point mark only thrice throughout the season. That brought the microscope on Garrett Riley and the work he had done as the team’s offensive coordinator.
Swinney fired Riley on December 29, and now the search for a new OC is on. Interestingly, there is a growing concern about whether Swinney himself is going to get fired by Clemson.
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