Re: TNET: Finebaum doesn't want Dabo Swinney to get fired like Mike Gundy

99% of Real Clemson Fans want Dabo to stay another 20 years!!. . . Finebaum is an idiot!

He has to get the team turned around and back on track. He will have to make adjustments to his coaching staff and friends and family advisors and analysist, and he will get that figured out and fixed. He has done it before bringing in Venables, Chad Morris and Jeff Scott, etc...

I would like to see Riley go elsewhere (I really wanted him to be successful), because our offense has never really worked well since he joined. Move Kyle Richardson into the job as an interim, or permanent Offensive Coordinator if he is successful. Put points on the board and play with fire and enthusiasm. We seem to be sleepwalking on offense.

Defense has to get fired up, or changes there next. Maybe get Allen on the sideline....

Dabo will figure it out again!!!

Go Tigers, Beat the Heels!

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Sep 25, 2025, 9:07 PM [ in reply to Re: TNET: Finebaum doesn't want Dabo Swinney to get fired like Mike Gundy ]

TexasTiger80 said:

I think behind closed doors, on the coaching side with overall staff, he’s probably had some concerns at times before, but I think sometime between halftime vs Troy and halftime vs Syracuse he came to the conclusion he’ll have to cut some guys from the staff in December/January. Early on he fired guys he was close to, did it with Tony (but told him midseason and to look for another job in October so he wouldn’t have to publicly fire him, and I think some of the emotion isn’t just for his current players, but staff he’s wanted to see succeed, some former players some not. But I think how last season ended, he thought the coaching staff on offense had started to find itself and they knew what they could do with the returning talent. LSU offensively was week 1 errors all around, but clearly you saw a defensive coordinator coach and make adjustments mid game and an offensive coordinator that called plays like he was watching the play by play stats off the ESPN app.

I think where we landed was our players mentally getting in deeper and deeper holes after hitting adversity leading to poor starts since LSU. If we set aside execution and just look at effort, you’d rank the effort shown with LSU game they played with the most, then GT, Syracuse and Troy. But I think you can toss Troy out in the list since that’s the type of game you could predict starting flat footed. With each close lose to a good team, the mental edge for both sides of the ball to execute for a full 60 minutes has dropped after every loss thus far.

Dabo knows who isn’t going to be in the staff meetings come spring already. At least he’s decided on almost all of the staff changes we end up seeing in January. But for these young guys it’s hard to have grand expectations and lose week 1 at the end, self doubt creeps in, week 2 doesn’t boost their confidence, then losing at the last second at GT where even though we didn’t execute and perform to our standards, you saw that there was at least some fight for most the game and through the end. Syracuse was just the right team at the right time to get in 1 last sucker punch before the bell on the players mentally. That first half wasn’t Best as the standard, or even do your best as a standard. It’s not all of em mentally shutting down and not at the same times. We made more mistakes, but there was effort and fight to try and win the game in the 2nd half. That fight for 60 minutes is would’ve been enough to win despite mistakes. But going through the motions while also not executing in the process will dig a deep hole and dig it fast.

Looking back I think before Syracuse that press conference was partly Swinney being annoyed because there is definitely conversations behind closed doors that he isn’t going to say publicly. He probably knew that team was hurting and whether they tried to or not, the noise after GT was so loud that it was 7 straight days of hearing how bad they are and how they blew the season by week 3. That’ll f*** with you no matter who you are or how accurate the criticism is. And it showed. I think he publicly was trying to defend the players and through his rant point out that 3 games doesn’t define a season. Didn’t work out how he may have hoped, but you could see he was hurting before that game and more visibly so after, he’s been not just on the “we aren’t contenders any more” hot seat, but the actual “hey coach, you’ve had a few years, this is your first time coaching at this level, and the team just ended with a losing record” legitimate hot seat where he nor the fans had any certainty on if or when his time at Clemson might end. He’s had 15 years of going through the highs and lows, and I think this time was just him knowing that it wasn’t going to be a veteran head coach that’s 55 years old that was going to get the heat of it, but that a bunch of 18 to 23 year old young men were going to receive backlash they haven’t seen before in their lives on a public and national scale. If you’re around someone and care about them as a person, it’s gonna hurt when you know that’s about to hit them. And you saw the emotion and tone change.

He at least has been here before. He knows despite coaches that haven’t been able to further develop talent at a high level or despite the wrong calls at the wrong time, there’s enough talent to win more games moving forward than they’ll lose even if the execution doesn’t improve at all, as long as the effort can be there for 60 minutes. He got a 3-4 team that was younger 2 years ago to play with a fire in them that even if sloppy, gave them chances to stay in and win games through the end of the season. Hes going to try and do the same again. You can’t be an idiot that knows less than people outside of the building, and have managed to win it all twice against arguably the best coach in college football history. He knows the staff changes, just as he didn’t ever say he planned to fire Wes last year until it was publicly announced after the season. Hes gotten mentally battered teams to flip the switch mid season and as painful as last Saturday was, it was likely they catalyst going into a bye they sort of needed to decide that whether they get to play for a playoff spot or not, that they would commit to finishing the season and playing each game like their last until the season was over. He’ll do it again. I think you’ll see if they can start next Saturday and get up by 2 scores early in the game, that you’ll see that realization kick in that they may not be the best team in the country, but for almost every game left on the schedule they will be the best team on the field, and will start looking like it too as long as they play to compete from the first snap til the last.

Changes need to and will be made. We’ve also made mistakes, missed opportunities, and haven’t put together 4 good quarters on both sides of the ball. But the talent isn’t as questionable as 2023: we KNOW that there’s talent to win 7 of the next 8, and potentially 8 of 8 with improvement if they can keep 11 guys on the field at the same time that have commited to playing full speed and intensity, no matter if the play breaks down, a ball is dropped, or an assignment is blown. If they can get right mentally by next Saturday, things will start looking different regardless of play calling or mistakes made. Cause this teams good enough to beat most teams even with mistakes if they’re going at 100% both mentally and physically for 60 minutes.

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TNET: Finebaum doesn't want Dabo Swinney to get fired like Mike Gundy