Young corners draw criticism, a player is tossed out, a player mentally checked out

Swinney said the offense was too casual with the football (Photo by Merrell Mann).

David Hood - Senior Writer - Wednesday, March 12 2025

CLEMSON – One player was thrown out, another was already checked out for spring break, and a group of cornerbacks have a lot of work to do.

Head coach Dabo Swinney was all smiles following Wednesday’s scrimmage, and while he doles out pointed criticism sparingly for the most part, he delivered a few barbs for his players.

Wednesday’s scrimmage was the last before the team goes different directions for spring break, and Swinney was asked about young corners like Corian Gipson, Tavoy Feagin and Branden Strozier. Swinney had been bragging on several younger players but with Ashton Hampton and Avieon Terrell drawing limited reps, the youngsters were thrown into the fire.

And burned.

“They've all got a ways to go. Thank God we don't play today,” Swinney said. When he was asked to pick out where they need to grow, he said, "Name one. They all got a ways to go. Every one of them. Hope y’all print that. Ain't none of 'em ready to play. Thank God we don't play right now. I am glad we don’t play this spring.”

Quarterback Cade Klubnik wasn’t overly impressive in his limited reps.

"Very average. Looked like he checked out and thought he was already gone to Cabo or something,” Swinney said, “Not very focused. He didn’t have his best day, maybe because he knew he wasn’t going to get a lot of reps.”

The defense did a good job of taking the ball away from an undisciplined offense.

“Obviously, we got a lot of guys out and so you're mixing and matching some things and sometimes you got, some guys can't play, but they got to be in there because we need 11 guys because we really need to see these guys over here to get some reps. But it's good. I mean, we just got to keep going. We got to develop our team. I thought defensively, they were awesome in the red zone today. They turned the offense over in the red zone a few times, which was good to see from the defensive perspective. But I thought we were too casual with the ball on the offensive side. But all in all, again, first scrimmage, first time to kind of play and coach as coaches in a kind of creating a game environment. I thought we were really undisciplined.”

*Swinney said a defensive player was tossed out after a silly foul.

*He mentioned Adam Randall and Jarvis Green as running backs who have flashed.

*Freshman Marquise Henderson from BHP is dealing with a hamstring issue and hasn’t practiced.

*Dee Crayton and C.J. Kubah-Taylor are linebackers whose arrows are pointing up, along with nickel Shelton Lewis and Misun Kelley and Noah Dixon.

*He has seen a difference in tackling.

“I think that's been a huge emphasis in particular in space. I saw a couple of really good open field tackles today. And again, Coach (Tom) Allen has done a great job, man. He's a rolling ball of butcher blades out there on that practice field every single day. And if you don't have the right technique, you're going to hear it. So, you see the improvement coming. We got to tackle better. We got to do the little things better if we're going to be better on defense. So it starts with tackling.”

*All three punters are battling, but Jack Smith won the day again today (three out of four punts were good).