Beginning of the Long, Slow End

I've been too busy to even visit the blog lately, much less post but I can't let the Miami game go. Maybe I'll comment on this another time, but suffice it to say through a series of happenstances I now find myself living in Japan and working like the Japanese.

So I stayed up from 1:00am to nearly 5:00am Sunday morning (hey NCAA--here's an idea for shortening college football games: how about strictly limiting the number of media timeouts for noon start times??) hoping to see Death Valley work its magic. Instead, I think I saw the beginning of the end of Dabo era. Given our conservative leanings in matters of personnel change, I don't doubt that Dabo is here for at least three full years, but when the axe comes down I think we'll look back at the Auburn-Miami games as when he passed the point of no return, so to speak. If you're an individual whose job description requires you to objectively make decisions about the future of the program, you just saw two very winnable games that we essentially coached ourselves out of.

In the Auburn game, it was the sporadic poor play call and the inability to recognize the other team's adjustments and counter (quite possibly the most important task for a coach in this modern football world of 3-D replays and Jon Madden-fueled layman football knowledge). Against Miami, it was just about every facet of the game directly affected by the coaches: the play calling, the lack of a concerted attack plan out of the gate, generally poor recognition and adjustment-making skills, the inability to motivate players, the inability to keep players focused, and even decisions about personnel on the field. The only thing keeping us in the game: Miami coaches who weren't a whole lot better.

Let's be clear: I am not hoping Dabo Swinney fails. I hope he turns this around and hey, he did a reasonable job of bouncing back after a rocky start last year. But at the same time, Clemson fans would be wise to wake up out of their Swinney slogan-induced stupor: hearkening back to a post I made last year, the list of coaches of current ACC programs with a mediocre second-year record that went on to illustrious careers is extremely short. And I don't think anyone mistakes Dabo for a Frank Beamer or Mack Brown.