On Friday, head coach Dabo Swinney and Clemson Football announced that Nick Eason has been named defensive run game coordinator/defensive tackles coach. The hire was officially approved by the Clemson University Board of Trustees Compensation Committee on Friday morning.
A veteran of 17 combined NFL seasons as a player and coach, Eason will join defensive ends coach Lemanski Hall to give Clemson’s talented defensive line group the guidance of a coaching duo with 26 combined seasons of NFL experience.
On the Packer and Durham show on ACC Network, Mark Packer and Wes Durham gave some thoughts on Clemson’s hire of Eason, a four-year letterman for the Tigers from 1999-2002 whose playing career included 117 NFL games over 10 seasons from 2003-12 with the Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals.
“This guy was a monster as a player,” Durham said. “Suffice it to say, if they play like he played, it’s over up front. Holy cow.”
Eason transitioned to coaching in 2013 as a coaching intern for the Cleveland Browns, for whom he had previously played three seasons from 2004-06. In 2014, he was hired by the Tennessee Titans and helped oversee Tennessee’s transition from a 4-3 to a 3-4 front. He spent two seasons as an assistant defensive line coach from 2014-15 before becoming the Titans’ defensive line coach in 2016-17, helping defensive tackle Jurrell Casey to the first three of his five career Pro Bowl selections to date in those four years.
From 2019-20, Eason served as defensive line coach for the Cincinnati Bengals. In his first season, Eason led significant improvement in the Bengals’ defensive line as the season progressed, notching an 11-sack improvement and an 84.1-yard reduction in yards per game in the second half of the season. Under Eason’s guidance, defensive tackle Geno Atkins earned his eighth Pro Bowl selection.
Most recently, Eason served as defensive line coach at Auburn, helping the Tigers to their largest sack total since 2018 in his first season. Auburn allowed the third-fewest yards per carry in the SEC and finished fourth in the conference in tackles for loss in his debut campaign on the Plains.
Packer believes Swinney and the Tigers hit it out of the park by bringing Eason aboard their coaching staff as the replacement for Todd Bates, who spent the last five seasons as Clemson’s defensive tackles coach before recently leaving to join Brent Venables’ staff at Oklahoma.
“I think it took Dabo Swinney six minutes to make this phone call… I think this is a great hire, for a lot of reasons,” Packer said. “I think one of the things Dabo wanted was a guy with NFL experience. He played in the NFL for 10 years. He knows Clemson. Of course, he was at Auburn last year, for getting into the college coaching ranks. Todd Bates has moved on to Oklahoma. But I think everybody within the Clemson circle thought this was a absolute home run hire.”
In spite of all the injuries Clemson endured on the defensive side of the ball in 2021, the Tigers still managed to rank second nationally behind only Georgia in scoring defense (14.8 points per game allowed) and eighth in the country in total defense (305.5 yards per game allowed).
Packer thinks with better health, the Tigers’ defense could be even nastier next season, and says that’s a positive for Eason as he joins the staff.
“Here’s the good news for Nick Eason,” Packer said. “When you realize what Clemson lost as far as injuries go and yet that defense was still pulverizing people — defensively next year, knock on wood that they stay healthy, that is going to be one talented group on the defensive side. They were really good this year. They have a chance to be spectacular in ’22.”
–Clemson Athletic Communications contributed to this story
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