What began as a typical morning TV segment about the Jacksonville Jaguars cutting Leonard Fournette quickly and sharply veered into more interesting territory when Mike Tannenbaum floated Dabo Swinney as a possibility for the Jags' new head coach.
“There's a lot of speculation that Dabo Swinney, who's been on the short list of multiple head coaching searches, could be a coach that teams want to talk about,” the former New York Jets GM said. “This would be the perfect storm and here's why. He's immensely popular in that area of the country and if he can go with Trevor Lawrence right down the road to Jacksonville, with all those picks and cap room, that's the ideal situation. I know from talking to a number of NFL general managers, they see Dabo in the same mold as Pete Carroll. A high energy guy. Pete Carroll has been a coach in the college and the pros. If Dabo Swinney was going to do it, and that's a big if, this would be the perfect situation. If Swinney would ever go, this would be the perfect storm to do it with, following this season.”
Coaching changes are, of course, two-way streets.
So while it's obvious why Jacksonville would be interested in a coach that's 69-5 with five ACC championships, five Playoff appearances, four title game appearances and two national titles in his past five years, it's less clear why Dabo would be interested in coaching a team that's finished above .500 once since 2008.
And that's not even considering the king's ransom it would take to get Dabo out of his record-breaking $93 million deal that's just over a year old.
None of this touches the competitive reasons why Clemson is a better job than Jacksonville. Coaching Trevor Lawrence for another decade is nice, but coaching the next Trevor Lawrence while surrounding him with a No. 1 recruiting class is even better.
At Clemson, Dabo is a king, the king of an orange-and-purple castle where he's lived since 2003 with two of his sons on the team.
In Jacksonville, Dabo is a rookie head coach -- we're talking about a former walk-on who's never spent a day of his life in an NFL organization -- leading an underdog franchise in one of the NFL's smallest markets.
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe Dabo is tired of making annual Playoff trips and he's ready for a new challenge -- especially one that could offer cap space, high draft picks and a familiar face with gloriously long, blonde hair.
I know this: I think we'd all love to see Jacksonville make its best run at Dabo.