Dabo Swinney enters his seventh full season as Clemson’s head coach with a team picked by the media to win the ACC and a quarterback who is the preseason ACC Player of the Year. Four players from the Tigers’ offense were voted onto the 2015 All-ACC preseason football team, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say Swinney’s team is better on that side of the ball than anyone else in the league.
On Tuesday, the Clemson coach expressed confidence in this year’s offense during a visit with The David Glenn Show.
“We’re going to be immensely better than we were last year, offensively,” Swinney said. “That’s going to help some of those losses defensively. Last year, we really relied on our defense a lot because we were just kind of average offensively.”
The Tigers will be replacing eight defensive starters this season, including all four on the D-line. However, Swinney isn’t expecting a significant drop-off, and he even went as far as saying that the secondary may be the best it’s been since he arrived at Clemson.
“Our first 11, 12 or 13 guys on defense — you’re not going to notice any difference than where we finished the Oklahoma game,” the head coach said, referring to his team’s 40-6 victory over the Sooners in the Russell Athletic Bowl last December. “The difference for us defensively is, we still are a very deep group, and we’re still very talented, but we’re very inexperienced with our depth.”
During the conversation, Swinney also gave his opinion on the Confederate flag and talked about what makes quarterback Deshaun Watson such a special player. Click below to hear the full interview: