It is Game Week at Clemson

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney could not hide his excitement as he walked into the team room of the Tigers' football complex Monday morning.

CLEMSON— Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney could not hide his excitement as he walked into the team room of the Tigers' football complex Monday morning.

The reason for Swinney's joyous demeanor should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the program, or college football for that matter. The reason is, it is game week.

"It's a fun time of year. We're certainly ready to kick it off and get back on the field,” Swinney said. “We actually went out under the lights last (Sunday) night which was pretty cool preparing for an 8 o'clock kick. We've had a great camp, good game prep. There's only so far you can get without going and playing a game. That's the next step for us is going and playing an opponent and figuring out where we are. I'm excited to see us play and see what we need to do to improve and that's really our focus is to just get better one week at a time, one day at a time.

“It's that simple. This is a team that whatever happens Thursday night, we're going to have a lot of work to do. We have a long way to go but you've got to start somewhere. This is a great opportunity for us to be at home but at the end of the day, it's just one of 12. We've got to try to accomplish our first goal which is to win the opener. It's not going to be easy. This is an ACC game.”

Adding to the difficulty of the game being an opener and a conference game and a Thursday night game is the fact that the Yellow Jackets are entering the game with an entirely new coaching staff.

Gone is the Paul Johnson triple-option that was the bane of so many defenses. Now the Yellow Jackets are moving to play catch-up with the rest of the college football world embracing a spread offense under first-year head coach Geoff Collins.

“It's exciting, it's fun but it is a challenge for sure because there are a lot of unknowns going into this game for us — personnel-wise and schematically,” Swinney said. “Not only is it a coaching change but you have a complete philosophy change so you can't even watch tape and get a good feel for their personnel on the offensive side. This is a unique matchup.”

Collins brings with him a familiar face from his time with Temple to lead the Yellow Jackets’ offense in offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Dave Patenaude.

Patenaude is a 28-year collegiate coaching veteran.

Under his direction, Temple put together two of the three highest single-season passing totals in school history (3,273 yards in 2017, 3,297 yards in 2018) and ranked 24th nationally in scoring offense this past season. Individually, TU running back Ryquell Armstrong ranked second in the American Athletic Conference and 14th nationally in rushing (109.8 yards per game) and wide receiver Randle Jones ranked third in the AAC and 13th nationally in yards per reception (19.35 average) this season.

But just because the Tigers know about Temple, does not mean they know about Georgia Tech.

“Openers are always tough and then you throw in an opponent like Georgia Tech that has good players and it's a whole new staff," Swinney said. "That’s a challenge because we know a lot about Temple but we're not playing Temple. Last year we were going to play Texas A&M and we were studying Florida State and Notre Dame. 

"It's a challenge and there are always lots of unknowns. There are going to be moments in the game where we have to figure it out and the same thing for them. They know a lot more about Clemson than we know about them so that's an advantage definitely for them. We've got see what their plan is going to be, make the adjustments and go from there.”

With 40 new faces from last season, and a team that has 80 players who are either freshmen or sophomores, the challenge for the Tigers will be to see who is ready to step up to the challenge.

"We've got a lot of new pieces," Swinney said. "We've got over 40 people who were not on the team last year, so we have a lot of guys that are getting their first experience to Clemson and then we have a lot of new roles — guys that were on the team but now they have completely new roles or more significant roles."