Clemson football rumors: Insider promises big changes for Dabo Swinney

Adapt or die. This is the critical juncture for Dabo Swinney at Clemson. In his decade-plus run at Clemson, he has won a pair of national titles and made six of the first nine College Football Playoffs. However, Clemson is saddled with a disastrous 4-4 (2-4) record and will miss the playoff for the third consecutive season in 2023. ESPN's Pete Thamel believes big changes are coming to this program.

Thamel appeared on the Halloween edition of The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday afternoon. He touched on several important subjects during his guest appearance, including all that could be going on at Clemson. The big point that Thamel kept driving home is that "we're at an inflection point for some potential changes at Clemson." Swinney and others must take a good, hard look in the mirror.

Thamel discussed Swinney's inherent reluctancy to dip into the transfer portal or embrace NIL at all (H/T On3).

“I do think we’re at an inflection point for some potential change at Clemson. Obviously, it’s been long-discussed Dabo’s hesitancy to enter the transfer portal. I believe they’ve taken two backup quarterbacks in it. Obviously, he has been slow to embrace NIL, I think, might be the fairest way to say that. So there are some modernizations that may have to happen with the Clemson program.”

The really interesting thing he said was that he may need to totally re-evaluate his coaching staff.

“I think they’ll also take a long, hard look at that staff. Where he is now, a decade-plus into Clemson, is a place where a lot of the people who have risen up on that staff have come up through his system. So the question is, are there more outside voices needed? Is there more outside juice needed? Do you need to change and evolve more? The previous staffs were double-downs on what he’d done, and quite frankly, he’d done it better than anybody else.”

Swinney may be in rare company as a college football head coach, but it is starting to turn for him.

“Dabo’s going through a slump. Now he’s won two national titles, right? The list of coaches that have won two national titles that are actively coaching in college football is very, very short. … So nobody is through with Dabo Swinney ... So I really think four losses… they went a three-year stretch from I believe ‘18-20 without losing four games. So it will be interesting to see how Dabo evolves from this, because I think we’re at an inflection point for evolution.”

Here is a clip from Thamel's guest appearance from The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday afternoon.

Just because Swinney might be open to some coaching staff changes does not mean he will change.

ESPN's Pete Thamel suggests big changes are coming to Clemson Tigers

Thamel is absolutely right that much of Swinney's coaching staff has been poached by other programs, albeit to little or no effectiveness. To date, his greatest coaching tree branches are Billy Napier at Florida, formerly at Louisiana, and Brent Venables at Oklahoma. They are both only in year two at their respective schools, and Napier's tenure at Clemson over a decade ago did not end well.

By essentially doubling, and even in some instances, tripling and quadrupling down, it has made the Clemson program rather insular. This isolated way of doing things worked out quite well for the Tigers in the 2010s, but this has not been the same program since Trevor Lawrence turned pro after his junior season in 2021. Apparently, the quarterback play was what elevated the Tigers under Swinney.

Overall, I have my doubts that Swinney is going to embrace the wholesale changes necessary to bring the Clemson program back to what it was some five to seven years ago. The entire sport has changed drastically since the dawn of NIL and the transfer portal. Truth be told, he has a job to do, which is to win football games. Reluctance to embrace the modern will sadly lead to his undoing.

Didn't Swinney bring in a new offensive coordinator that has not worked out in Garrett Riley already?