Swinney says offense key to 2011 hopes |
AUDIO: Dabo Swinney at the ACC Football Kickoff
PINEHURST, N.C. – The 2010 season was a 6-7 disaster for the Clemson Tigers, with anything and everything going wrong, right up until the loss to South Florida in the bowl game. Missed field goals. Injuries. Red zone and scoring issues. Defensive breakdowns. Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was reminded of all of those Monday morning, and then he was asked about the one thing, the one difference from 2010 to 2011 that he would like to see, that could lead to a more successful season and more wins than last year’s six. His answer was direct and simple. “Scoring. It’s that simple,” Swinney told the ACC media during the ACC Football Kickoff at Pinehurst Resort. “The year before we played for the [ACC] championship and we scored more points than any other team in Clemson history. I think it’s pretty correlated. This past year we really struggled scoring. We did some good things. We competed our butts off. You have to give the guys a lot of credit. “They played hard. We were in a position to win a lot of games- five losses by six points or less. We did a really poor job on the road in all of the close games- four of those were 17 points. To me, if you ask me for one thing, we have to score more points. If we can score more points, it will take the pressure off of our defense.” Swinney said that defense coordinator Kevin Steele and his defense gave the Tigers a chance to win every game a season ago. “Our defense played well enough to win this conference last year,” he said. “When you are an offense that is having a hard time scoring in the red zone, you have to be able to kick field goals, and we were as bad as there was out there last year. That was kind of a double whammy for us. We have to be better scoring and we will have the chance to win a few more games.” Swinney said he had all of that in mind when he went looking for a new offensive coordinator, and he thinks that new offensive coordinator Chad Morris will give the program a chance to have a significantly higher number of wins in 2011. Morris’ offense at Tulsa averaged 41 points per game, over 500 yards of total offense per game and Tulsa was the only team in the nation to finish in the Top 15 nationally in both rushing and passing offense. Swinney was asked what realistic expectations for the offense in 2011 were, considering the level of defense in the conference. “I don’t expect those types of numbers in this conference,” he said. “This has been a very good defensive conference for a long time. If you look at the top 25 defenses in the country, you’ve got a lot of ACC schools that are in there. I expect to be near the top in this conference- that’s our goal. If you ask Coach Morris, he will tell you, ‘Hey, I want to be the number one offense in America.’ “Before he went to Tulsa last year, I don’t know where they were, maybe 80th or so in the country. When he got to Tulsa, I’m sure he was saying the same thing and they finished fifth in the nation in scoring and all of those things you just talked about. I expect results, and I certainly expect to be very good. Now, 42 points, I’m not quite sure that’s realistic. I’ll sign up for that right now. Hopefully, when it’s all said and done we are scoring 28 a game and we can still be good on defense. Hopefully, that will equate to a very good season.”
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