It all builds to this: Swinney details the start of the 2024 season

Swinney speaks with the media to open another season at Clemson.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Tuesday, July 16 2024

CLEMSON – It all builds to this.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney and the assistant coaches held the Tigers’ annual media day Tuesday at the Reeves Football Complex, and with the start of August practice just a few weeks away, it’s the start of the best time of the year.

“Appreciate the opportunity to kick this thing off in this 2024 season. It's going to be a lot of fun,” Swinney said during his press conference. “As coaches, we love this time of year, we start over in January, that's what we do. It's just the nature of our world, but it all builds to this. Everything builds to getting back on the field. You are starting over and recruiting and off-season program and mat drills and new team and new leadership and new roles and spring practice and summer workouts and just meetings, et cetera. It all builds to right now and getting back on the field, getting an opportunity to go play games, get a judgment every week, good or bad. So that's what it's all about.

“So it's fun to get it going. There's a lot that goes into getting to this point and I really appreciate the work that's been put in by our staff and especially our players. But it's another year, it's a blessing. This is my, I guess, my 35th college football season, and it never gets old and, so we're excited about it. We've got a lot to do tomorrow. We'll start our All In meetings with our staff. That's usually about five days, and we've got obviously the media day next week in Charlotte.”

The first day of camp? The first day of August.

“We've got a couple more weeks of training with our guys, getting them ready to roll right into camp. And so we'll be starting on the 30th (of July) as far as our admin meetings and report day and then first day on the field will be the first (August 1). So a lot of work to do,” Swinney said. “Excited about it and lots of opportunities to improve in all areas offensively for us. I think the biggest thing is just year two, making a big jump with Garrett (Riley) coming in last year, and obviously we had not everything at our disposal, we had some injuries and things like that, but just biggest thing, just taking a big jump in year two in totality as an offense.”

Swinney said the offense has to cut down on the negative plays.

“And figuring out who our best five, best ten are in that offensive line. I think we've got really good experience there for the first time in a while,” Swinney said. “We've got ten guys on scholarship at receiver and they're actually all healthy so we're in a good place there. So hopefully through that competition we'll be able to create the type of playmaking and big plays that we want to have at that position. So (Phil) Mafah is going to set the tone for us, excited about the competition behind him. The biggest thing for us, again offensively, to take the next step is just cutting down on the negative plays.

“Obviously too many turnovers and those type of things. We have to improve in the red zone scoring area and then our pass offense has got to take a big step forward for us this year. That was a big area for us of emphasis defensively last year and we took a big step forward and hopefully, we can do that on the offensive side, and I think health availability and depth at our skill position will be a big part of that.”

Running backs

“Excited about the competition at running back too outside of Mafah. I think we all know what we have there, but just I think it's going to be a lot of fun. We have a very competitive group behind him and kind of seeing how all that sorts out will be a lot of fun.”

Defensively

“Defensively just consistency, we're coming off a top 10 finish last year in defense, let's put back to back years together and let's create the type of consistency that we want. We have to improve in the red zone there as well. We didn't give up, not many people got to the red zone a lot, but when we did we gave up too many touchdowns in that area. That's been a big emphasis for us in the off season here, figuring out our best four, our best eight in that defensive line and how to best use our bodies.

“We've got a lot of big strong athletic bodies there and how to use those. And I'd say the same thing on the back end. We've got a good mixture of some savvy veteran guys and a lot of really good young talent and some good experienced young talent. So, we have length and athleticism, but how to best use those bodies on the back end will be a big emphasis in camp. And then just solidifying who our top six are at linebacker. I think there'll be a lot of competition right there.

"Special teams: kicker competition. Obviously the number one thing for us there is we have to get better in field goal. That really hurt us, especially early part of the year and we've tried to address that and hopefully we'll have great competition there and improve their confidence with our punt returners. We think we have elite ability there creating that confidence with the catchers there.”