"Buying into the System"

I mentioned last Saturday featured one of the least-prepared broadcasting duos I have ever heard. I know its hard to fill that much air time and if it was me lord knows I'd be spouting off all sorts of non-sensical things within a few minutes. From what I could tell though, they had essentially prepared two anecdotes to discuss on air (which they returned to again and again): 1) Ralph Friedgen's new diet and 2) Dabo Swinney's abilities as a motivator. As little an effort to prepare for a game that this represents, what they mentioned about Swinney is unintentionally revealing about the state of Clemson football.

Essentially the anecdote went something like this: one of the announcers was talking recently to Swinney and he said the most important thing the Clemson staff had tried to emphasize with the players was "getting them to buy into the system." Now, I understand that this is pretty standard fare for a head coach. You don't want to talk specifics because if you say, "we really need to improve on the offensive line", and things don't get better...well, you might as well draft and proofread the blogposts and opinion columns and call-in radio diatribes yourself.

But this kind of talk really irritates me for two reasons. First, this is classic Bowden-esque mediaspeak the Clemson fanbase has come to despise. The comment is designed to insulate yourself from becoming the scapegoat by placing the blame for failure squarely on those lazy and selfish and attention-craving players out on the field (who "just don't play the game the way its supposed to be played"). In the end all Swinney has to say if the season falls apart is that if the players had just embraced his system, the results would have been different.

The second reason is personally more stomach-churning. Why, exactly, should any player on the offense feel compelled to "buy into the system"? What reason has the staff given them? Its become painfully clear that there is no defined offensive system. The fans are just coming to this realization, but the players have been talking to the coaches since Spring. What if they have been just as confused all along as we are now? How can you expect someone to buy into something if they have no idea what it is? If this was Jim Grobe at Wake Forest and we had a track record of a few years of incremental improvement, then yes, you can and should ask players to buy into your system. But this offensive staff is made up of a lot of the same people that were involved in the trainwrecks of the Bowden years. I'm sure the players want to believe, but these are intelligent kids. I'm sure they can see out on the field that Clemson has an overall advantage in athletic ability relative to other teams. Yet despite this, they find themselves in close games against teams they should crush, and end up inexplicably losing games to boot. What conclusions about the coaching would you end up drawing if you were in the same situation?

Swinney is still inexperienced at this head-coaching thing, and worse, his primary mentor is the guy the fanbase drove out of town. Hopefully these kind of comments are unintentional and harmless. Maybe he was only saying this to the team in the pre-season. But if he's still saying it now, this deep into a season of absolute offensive futility, he's risking a complete disconnection with the players. There's no way the players can be expected to buy into this system now, unless Swinney expects them to take it on faith. But this ain't a church, and Swinney ain't a preacher.

My completely unsolicited advice: take responsibility for the situation, and take it quickly. In the future, give honest assessments of what needs to be improved, and admit when the improvement hasn't happened. That's the kind of straight-talking that's appreciated in regions around Clemson, and it's also the kind that's been sorely lacking in the last decade.