During Clemson's 28-7 loss to No. 21 Duke on Labor Day, criticism of the Clemson offense, and particularly Dabo Swinney's management of the Clemson offense, ran hot and heavy.
Swinney hired Garrett Riley to run the offense in the offseason, but a debut in which the Tigers scored all of one touchdown led to a consensus that Clemson's problems on offense stuck around, even if coordinator Brandon Streeter did not.
Dabo said after the game that Clemson would win out if it played offensively the way it did against the Blue Devils -- Clemson somehow was shut out in the second half despite not punting -- but on Monday night during his weekly radio show, Dabo expanded on his response to the criticism of the way he's run Clemson's offense.
Particularly, in his resistance in utilizing the transfer portal. Clemson has taken one transfer since 2021 despite losing 31 players, according to the 247Sports database.
“People talk about this portal all the time," Swinney said, via Clemson247. "Do I prefer the portal? No. But am I opposed to it? No, absolutely not."
"And there is not ever a spot that comes open on our roster over the past year or so where we have not said, 'Do we take a portal guy?'" Swinney said. "To this point, outside of a couple of occasions, there have been two or three great ones, that we thought would help us… but guess what? They got to love you too. Just because you want them don’t mean they want you. And then other guys that we have evaluated, but we like the guys we have here.
"We have conviction. You are never going to make (everyone happy), there is always going to be criticism, especially when you have success, which is good, because people care, that is fine.... we’re not sitting here today - I would have been long gone, a long time ago, if I ran this program the way everybody else wanted me to run it. I wouldn’t be sitting here. At the end of the day you have to have conviction in what you believe in as leader and understand that some people are going to like you and some people are not going to like you and some are going to believe in what you want to do and some aren’t and that just comes with it. But at the end of the day you have to do things with the way you believe and we have a process that we believe in and if I was somewhere else my process would probably be different, but we have an established culture."
Last Monday night's struggles were juxtaposed against the success of Week 1's biggest winners: Colorado and Florida State.
Colorado had just stunned TCU with a roster built almost entirely on transfers, while Florida State pummeled LSU in a showcase game, led by transfer quarterback Jordan Travis and wide receiver Keon Coleman, who caught nine passes for 122 yards and three touchdowns in his first game as a Seminole.
“And listen, I have seen a lot of so-called ‘hot coaches’ that are the greatest thing ever and hot teams that have a great moment or a great year and then a couple of years later they are long gone, you never hear from them again and we just kept on keeping on around here," Swinney said. "And so, we know who we are. Are we perfect? No. Are we always right? No. Not even close. But I think we’ve demonstrated that we’ve got a clue. I love the people we have and when we make a mistake, we try and correct it. We are ahead this decade with where we were last decade and we are going to have another great year."
Clemson, 1-1 after a win over Charleston Southern, hosts Florida Atlantic on Saturday before welcoming No. 3 Florida State on Sept. 30.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.