Riley says Clemson offense should be almost fully installed by spring game

Garrett Riley says they have installed a good chunk of the new offense already.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Wed Mar 22 07:00:14 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON – Half of spring practice is in the books, and offensive coordinator Garrett Riley is happy with where his offense sits from an install standpoint.

The Tigers are on spring break this week and will return to hold seven more practices and the spring game (April 15th). The first part of the spring was spent installing as much of offense as possible. With several key offensive players missing time – wide receivers Troy Stellato, Adam Randall, and Beaux Collins, offensive lineman Walker Parks – Riley was asked how much those players have missed.

“Install-wise, really not much. We're going to put in what we need to put in and just get a base foundation of accumulating great tape for us to move into summer and fall camp,” Riley said. “I really don't care who's out there right now. We've got guys that need to get reps and things we need to get tape of and we can build off of that."

Riley then detailed how much of his Air Raid offense he expects to be installed by the end of the spring.

"If I had to put a percentage on it, I'd say 80-90. Pretty full amount,” he said. “Then you see where it goes, see what I'm saying? You put in your base install and then you see what you're good at. That's what we're trying to do as coaches. It's ultimately one of our goals on offense is by the end of spring identify what our strengths and weaknesses are. Based on that, that's what we'll go into fall camp with, and based on fall camp, that's what we'll roll with in the season. We're going to live and die kind of with that."

Several offensive players have mentioned that the Tigers’ playbook will be scaled down for games this year, and Riley said the coaches will have only as many plays as it takes to win a game.

"I mean, it's not 80 (plays). It's not 80,” Riley said. “Whatever we feel like we need to carry. For us and what we do, less is more. We'll just see where we're at and what we feel like we need to carry, but if we can trim it, we're going to trim it."

Riley said he wants his offense to get good at just a few things before making major changes.

"I think more than anything is let's get good at a few things and let's grow from there. Let's just kind of dumb it back down, start fresh, and gain an identity early,” Riley said. “Let's come away with an identity offensively. And that will grow. Don't get bored with the routine. Don't get bored with doing things over and over and over again. That's something our guys have to buy into. And we have so far, but we're early in spring ball and it's easy to do early, so we'll see how we progress or if we can sustain that all the way through.

"Mentally, I think you obviously want to see some results that come along with that (repetition) and can kind of validate why you do some things and I think we're seeing that early on through spring practices. The other thing is when you do so few things, and you just do it over and over again, all of sudden you can move players around and they know what to do. You can take that receiver that's always on the left, and you may have an injury on the right so you need to move him over, well because you're doing the same stuff all the time, that receiver knows what to do over there. He has seen it on tape over and over again. Now that kind of gives you some flexibility to move guys, so that's another part to it as well."