Dabo Swinney Happy with Offense's Progress After First Scrimmage

Spring practice is a time for getting a team up to speed. Developing freshmen, getting players into shape, and getting an idea of what your team will look like. A lot of times, when you're installing a new offense - like the Tigers are - those things can be slowed down just due to a lack of inherent knowledge, but according to Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney, that hasn't been the case for his team this spring. New offensive coordinator Garrett Riley and the Clemson staff seem to be ahead of schedule.

“For seven days we’ve had great energy, great energy, and we’ve had great competitiveness,” said Swinney. “Coach Riley’s done a great job. Offensively, we’ve got a lot in. We’ve actually been able to get a lot done. Probably the biggest thing, procedurally, we’ve really been clean… I’d say we’re ahead of where I thought we’d be at this point.”

That's huge for a Clemson team with College Football Playoff aspirations. Following Clemson's first scrimmage of the spring, Swinney was asked where the team was in terms of tempo. Riley's offense is known for being up-tempo, but that doesn't necessarily mean Clemson will be going 100 mph all the time. Instead of "going fast", Riley seems to like the term "dictating tempo". Swinney echoed his sentiment.

“We can dictate the tempo. We can go fast, we kind of vary it, but we’ve got the ability to go really fast, and we’ve got the ability to slow it down. I think we’ve got all that installed, in terms of what we need to do procedurally. Again, that’s the thing I’m probably most pleased with is [when you're installing an offense] you’re facing off-sides/cadence issues, alignment issues, and we really haven’t had that.”

Clemson will meet on Thursday before breaking for spring break. Spring practice will then pick back up on the 27th.

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