Swinney making moves to add veterans, coffee drinkers if you will, to his staff

Dabo Swinney continues to add depth and experience to a coaching staff that was once woefully short on both. (ACC photo)

David Hood - Senior Writer - Tuesday, February 11 2025

Dabo Swinney continues to add depth and experience to a coaching staff that was once woefully short on both.

Over the last few weeks, Swinney has made a flurry of moves to bolster his staff and front office – a weird term but one that is applicable in this new era of college football. Swinney hired Tom Allen as his defensive coordinator, the program added Kevin Kelly as the Director of Player Evaluation and Acquisition, and Lonnie Galloway and Mike Houston were brought on as unpaid volunteers to help with the offense (Galloway) and defense (Houston).

But it goes back further than that – following the Tigers’ loss at NC State back in 2023, a fuming Swinney put his staff on notice and has made the moves he deems necessary. He added offensive line coach Matt Luke and defensive ends coach Chris Rumph in the days following the 2023 regular season, and Lorenzo Ward was brought in as a special assistant to the head coach, defense and special teams.

Following the 2021 season, Swinney was faced with several changes to his staff – Tony Elliott left to be the head coach at Virginia, Robbie Caldwell retired as offensive line coach, Brent Venables was named the head coach at Oklahoma and defensive tackles coach Todd Bates left with Venables for Norman.

Swinney didn’t waste a lot of time naming Thomas Austin as offensive line coach, Kyle Richardson to tight ends coach, Lemanski Hall was in his third season as defensive ends coach, Brandon Streeter was elevated to offensive coordinator, Mickey Conn as co-defensive coordinator, and Wes Goodwin was moved up from the analyst ranks to take over as defensive coordinator. C.J. Spiller had been named the running backs coach in February of 2021.

I wrote an article stating that the coaching staff had once been one of the country's deepest and most experienced, with over 200 years of on-field experience as assistant or head coaches at the collegiate level. That December, the staff's combined experience was just 57 years. One of the former assistants told me that there are times during a season or a game when you need someone who has been there before and can rely on their experiences to help their players.

In other words, Clemson had a lot of people learning on the job, not at the Division II or Division III or FCS level, but at Clemson.

With the recent additions, that coaching number has jumped significantly — now well over 100 years. The younger guys who are still on staff now have three more years of experience, and Swinney has added some key pieces like Ward, former Jacksonville State head coach John Grass, former Penn St. and Detroit Lions defensive line coach John Scott, former Penn State defensive analyst Thomas Allen (son of Tom Allen), and now Galloway and Houston to the ranks.

All of the support guys from Ward on down are now allowed to coach on the field, and someone like Ben Boulware (who will coach the linebackers) will have someone like Ward and Houston by his side to help. Tajh Boyd is taking on a bigger role and has Grass (who is highly-regarded and thought of in the coaching ranks and in the building) and Galloway to ease his transition.

I have a friend who works in sales, and one of his sales pitches is that his group is full of veterans, not kids off the street. He will tell customers, “We’re a bunch of coffee drinkers with a little gray in our beards, not wild kids drinking Red Bull and looking at their phones all day.”

Grizzled veterans, in other words. Spring practice starts in 17 days, and all of the new pieces will be in place. Change is in the air, and that’s a good thing.