Football teams are like people in the sense that no two are alike.
Whether it be roster turnover, coaching changes or the varying personalities that come with both, each year brings a different group for college football programs equipped with its own DNA.
How that will translate on the field this fall for Clemson remains to be seen. The Tigers don’t start fall camp until Aug. 5, and there’s still more than a month before they kick off the new season against Georgia Tech on Labor Day night.
But there’s one trait head coach Dabo Swinney is already fond of when it comes to the 2022 version of the Tigers.
“The one thing I love about his team is they’re very self-aware,” he said.
Swinney pointed to the lack of departures his team had in the transfer portal this offseason as a prime example. Clemson lost eight during the 2021 season and shortly after it ended, but 109 players participated in the Tigers’ spring practices. All of those players are back for the fall.
To put that in perspective, of all the Power Five programs, Clemson was one of just four that did not have a player transfer after the spring. Swinney credited that to his players being honest with themselves about their development within the Tigers’ program.
“A lot of times when you have these exit meetings – and 109 meetings is a lot coming out spring – there’s been very few years where you go through your whole roster (feeling that way),” Swinney said. “Every now and then, you’ll have a meeting where you have to take a deep breath because you know it’s about to be a tough meeting. Or you have a meeting and you’re not on the same page. And I didn’t have any of that this year. There wasn’t a single meeting where I had to kind of get myself mentally ready, and there wasn’t a single meeting where we weren’t on the same page. And I love that about this team.”
With the one-time transfer rule in effect, Swinney acknowledged it’s easy nowadays for college players to get discouraged about a lack of playing time or feeling like they’re not getting adequately prepared to achieve their NFL dreams and immediately seek a fresh start somewhere else. So far, that hasn’t been the case for Clemson this year.
“Self-awareness, it’s not always there with young people, especially with the type of talented guys that we have,” Swinney said. “This is ultimately a developmental game, and a it’s long-term process. It doesn’t always happen when you want it to in the short-term, but I think that says a lot about this group, how focused they are, what they think about Clemson, what they think about their coaches and their overall experience here.”
