Clemson Shakes Off Rust As Spring Practice Resumes
Clemson returned to spring football practice on Monday following a 10-day break. Dabo Swinney and the Tigers have an important scrimmage coming up on Wednesday.
Clemson returned to spring football practice on Monday following a 10-day break. Dabo Swinney and the Tigers have an important scrimmage coming up on Wednesday.
Defending national champion Clemson returned to the practice field as spring football resumed on Monday following a 10-day break. The last time the Tigers were working out, head coach Dabo Swinney was putting his team through a 99-play scrimmage in the Poe Indoor Practice Facility in preparation for its spring game on Saturday, April 8 at Memorial Stadium.
When the squad broke for its hiatus, all eyes remained focused on the quarterback battle, as Swinney and his offensive staff are trying to replace two-time Heisman Trophy finalist Deshaun Watson, who graduated early and should be one of the top overall picks in the 2017 NFL Draft.
Rising junior Kelly Bryant has been running the No. 1 offense thus far in spring and had a nice scrimmage, completing 7-of-13 passes for 91 yards. On a late touchdown drive against the No. 1 defense, he went 4-of-5 passing, including a 39-yard strike to Hunter Renfrow. There’s no question that Bryant has the advantage over the other signal-callers as spring ball continues. However, rising redshirt freshman Zerrick Cooper did have a 13-yard touchdown run and completed 4 of his 8 passes.
The 99-play scrimmage covered all phases of the game, and offered Swinney an early glimpse at how his 2017 Tigers may be comprised. The 99 plays in the scrimmage were the same number of plays that the offense had in its College Football Playoff national championship win over Alabama. If Clemson has any chance to claim a second straight crown, Swinney knows there is plenty of work to do—especially after a sloppy but predictably rusty return to practice on Monday.
“I’ve seen worse on a first day back. They’ve been off [10] days or whatever, but not as sharp as we needed to be throughout practice,” Swinney told reporters after the session. “There were certainly some moments and we did some really good stuff. We just kind of got them back in shape. It didn’t look like we were starting over, but we were a little rusty today. But again, I’ve seen a lot worse practices coming off nine days of spring break, but we’ll build on it. Wednesday is going to be a big day. It will be another big scrimmage day. We only get three scrimmages in the spring.”
On the QB side of things, Swinney said all of the combatants for the starting job experienced some ups and downs in their return on Monday. He mentioned that Bryant started out shaky—just as he did in the first scrimmage—but finished the day strong. Perhaps the strongest efforts, though, came from the youngest signal-callers on the roster.
“I was very impressed with the two freshmen today,” Swinney said. “It’s the first time they’ve had that type of break. We installed a lot, and they just looked more comfortable today in processing stuff, especially [early enrollee] Hunter [Johnson]. He obviously has the furthest to come from learning the system. He looked more comfortable today. Same thing with Zerrick, and that’s pleasing to see.
“We’ve got 80 percent of the offense in, and we’re not going to have a lot more installation. We’re trying to go at their pace now because we want to see them go play. I think we’ve got enough in to do what we need to do offensively. We really need to challenge these quarterbacks and take advantage of these next couple of weeks.”
It’s never smart to put a ton of stock into spring football, of course. A lot can change over the course of the summer and in preseason camp. But with much of the installation of the program complete heading into the second scrimmage of the spring, Wednesday has become a big day for the coaching staff and the players. Grading and evaluating will be tougher, so Tiger players need to shake off that rust quickly.
“Wednesday’s a big day for a lot of these guys. As I told y’all beforehand, the first half of spring there’s installation and a lot of how to do certain things, kind of back to the basic fundamentals and the second half of spring is a lot of evaluation,” Swinney explained. “Right now, who can do it? Who can take what we put in and what we’ve taught and go do it consistently, so that’s the way we structured practice this year. Wednesday we’ll have a scrimmage. Friday is our clinic day, and that’s always a tough practice, and Monday and Wednesday will be half practice kind of 50-50 days, kind of half scrimmage days. We’ve got a lot of evaluation opportunity coming up in the next couple weeks.”
