Clemson Tigers Coaching Staff Taking "Collective Accountability" For 1-3 Start

The Clemson Tigers are looking to turn the corner following the team’s open date last weekend, and offensive line coach Matt Luke believes that the timing was perfect for a reset.

Luke spoke to the media on Wednesday afternoon about where the team goes next, taking responsibility as a coach for the team’s 1-3 start to the season, its worst since 2004.

“I think our team is in a good place,” Luke said. “I think the open date came at a good time and it is tough because they’re hearing all of the outside noise, but it’s our job to get our guys to focus and really just one practice at a time, because of the attention to detail and effort that is required to win football games.”

With his unit of the offensive line, he says that it’s been “little details” that have caused the position group to have an underwhelming start to 2024. With the different positions that many of the lineman play, Luke says that “different steps” and “different techniques” can be difficult to adjust to at times.

Even in Clemson's first game against LSU on Aug. 30, Luke said that even corrections have to be made in the opening contest, emphasizing that losing brings up the problems, not the positives.

“I think even for the veteran guys, when you go out there in the first game, there’s some little things that you have to correct and things that speed up and maybe you’re in a big situation and little things happen, but that’s football,” Luke said. “And, when you lose, everything gets magnified.”

Head coach Dabo Swinney harped on the fact that an "absolute coaching failure” has caused the team’s struggles early. The Tigers returned 80% of their offensive production but couldn’t find ways to bring back its high octane offense from a season ago.

Luke understands Swinney’s thoughts, lamenting the idea of the standard that Clemson has as a program because of its recent success throughout the last 15 years.

“First of all, it’s very fair. Like, when you come to Clemson, you expect to win national championships, and when you don’t win, there’s accountability that comes with that,” he said. “When you’re hired as a coach, you’re coming in expecting to win, so when you don’t, there’s accountability. There’s collective accountability, and I don’t think you point the finger at any one person, like we are all in this thing together.”

Luke says that Swinney has done a great job with uniting the team in a time of trouble as well. From the emotional meeting the team had last week to the emphasis on responding with complimentary football, the offensive line coach knows that the blame will end with the coaching staff, who has the personnel to compete with a national championship, they just haven’t executed.

“I think coach Swinney has done an unbelievable job during a tough time, accountability and leadership as coaches, because it starts with us,” Luke said. “I think, as a coach, you have a vision of the way you want to look when you step out onto the field, and if the vision doesn’t look the way you don’t want it to, it’s a failure. That’s our job, as coaches, to get our players playing and make that vision come to life on the field, like when you put the Paw on your helmet, there’s a certain way it’s supposed to look.”

Clemson will travel to Chapel Hill, North Carolina this weekend to face the Tar Heels and the team will look for its first ACC win of the season. Against a North Carolina team that has struggled to move the football, Luke hopes that the open date helped the team with responding.

With focusing on the outcomes too much with the Tigers, Luke is instructing his team to focus on the day at hand, and that day only.

“If you become too outcome driven, then you start worrying about a lot of different things,” he said. “So, I think just focus on the process one day at a time, I think that’s the key.”