A week into fall camp, and Clemson has nothing. At least that is the way head coach Dabo Swinney described things.
“Everybody’s just working. We’ve got a bunch of nobodies. They’re just, we’ll see. We’ll see if anybody becomes somebody as we play some games,” he said.
The 23rd-ranked Tigers start playing games on Sept. 5 when they visit No. 13 LSU in Baton Rouge, La. In the meantime, the first seven days of practice were about battling and finding out who are the best players.
“We’ve got a lot of competition, a lot of promotion, a lot of demotion. You know, we got some guys that run out there first every day, but we don’t have any starters,” Swinney said.
Swinney and his coaches should have a better idea of whom they can count on after Saturday. That is when Clemson hosts its first scrimmage of camp at Memorial Stadium.
“How are they retaining the knowledge of all the things that we put in? It’s their job to put it on tape and make us play them,” Swinney said. “I mean, demonstrate that they know what they’re doing, and they can do it with the type of effort, physicality, technique and fundamentals that wins.
“So, everybody gets evaluated. Again, sometimes a play is bad because somebody screwed up. You’re grading a receiver and he ran a great route, but he didn’t get the ball. The quarterback got sacked, whatever. You’re grading him on everything. He busted, you know, a ball didn’t come to him, went to the other side or whatever, but he busted.”
Swinney says they are evaluating everyone that is put on tape, every player and every position. Then, when the coaches start seeing all 11 going in the same direction, they know they are making progress.
“You know what you got to go back over or you take out. You know, because at the end of the day, it’s not what we know, it’s what they know,” Swinney said. “You get out of the way when you’re in (a scrimmage). The coaches are (off the field). You get everybody out of the way.”
Swinney is hoping Saturday’s scrimmage can give the coaches a little more clarification in the position battles that are taking place, like at quarterback, right tackle, right guard and at defensive tackle.
“You got ACC officials and you create a game day environment. That’s one of the reasons we go to the stadium just to have that type of feel,” he said. “And then you know, just like preseason games in the NFL, it’s no different, other than we’re playing ourselves. But you get a chance to kind of see where some guys are and there’s also some guys that we really know where they are and so you want to challenge some other guys to see if they’ve taken the next step.”
And by that time, they hope they found somebody, instead of having a bunch of nobodies.