Clemson HC Dabo Swinney Says "Absolute Coaching Failure" Led to Poor Start

Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney hasn’t had the start to the season that he’s wished for, being 1-3 for the first time in his tenure with the program.

When speaking to the media on Tuesday afternoon, he says that the team has fallen short of expectations due to coaching failures, saying that “we are what we are.”

“From a big picture standpoint, it’s just been a coaching failure, honestly,” Swinney said. “I mean, that’s just the best way that I can say it. We have just failed as coaches, and I’m not taking accountability away from the players, they got accountability in this too. You got some guys that have got to play better, they’re not just on scholarship anymore, some of these guys are paid a lot of money to perform, and everybody’s got accountability. But, it’s just an absolute coaching failure, I don’t have any other way to say it.”

Clemson has the personnel that matches some teams of a national championship contender. The team returned 80% of its production, which included 85% of the offense. However, the Tigers have been underwhelming to start the year, and it’s been the coaching that’s the root of the issue, according to Swinney.

“When players don’t play to their potential, to me, that’s coaches,” he said. “That’s on us. Like, when you don’t perform, because our problems really are football stuff.”

Despite this, and an eight-game schedule to turn the program’s season around in 2025, Swinney will not change the coaching staff just yet. The Clemson head coach says that the team has “good people”, yet being unable to execute has been the team’s trouble.

“It’s not time for that,” Swinney said. “I mean, we’ve got good people, but we have not done a good job, but we’ve got good people.

And, again, it’s a result business, right? So, you know, and again, when you’re in the outhouse, everything stinks, right? When you’re in the penthouse, you still have a pile of crap on the floor, but you just don’t notice it, like it just magnifies things, and it’s on us.”

Clemson is last in the ACC in points scored per game with 19.8 a contest, struggling to score points on offense when it was at a surplus. The Tigers finished in top four in the conference last season with an average of 34.7 points while keeping some of that personnel that succeeded from the offense.

Swinney says that the blame will start with him, and while the players will take accountability, it should fall on the coaches for the poor start.

“That’s our job. That’s what we get paid to do, is to bring out the best in our players, and we haven’t done that,” he said. “Again, that’s pointing the thumb at me because I make the decision on who runs the rooms, and again, we’ve got good people, and we’ve got good coaches.”

It’s also not like Clemson is struggling to make every play frustrating, Swinney says it comes with parts of the game.

“It’s truly football stuff,” he said. “It's making a third down catch, it’s playing your gap, it’s the proper angle. It’s playing over the top instead of underneath. I mean, it’s just football stuff that we have to do a better job of. It’s decision-making, the read tells me to give it, I give it. It’s doing what we’re coaching you to do, and when that’s not happening, that’s on us as coaches.”

Fortunately, the Tigers have an opportunity to flip their script with beginning a strong win streak. The team travels to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, this weekend to face the Tar Heels in the home team’s first ACC game of the season.

Clemson, still searching for its first ACC win in October, will look to soul search to find an identity into the ladder half of the season.

“The good news is, hey, we got to reset and we can coach our way out of it,” Swinney said, “just like we can coach our way into it.”