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The difficult parts of coaching
By: Larry Williams
CLEMSON -- In the recent ACC Network documentary on the 1981 national championship team, one of the underpinnings was the way a young disciple of Alabama and Bear Bryant handled things in practice.
Old-school (even for those days).
Relentless.
Unforgiving.
With one fascinating and important exception.
"Coach Bryant used to say you can treat them any way you want to treat them in practice as long as you win," Danny Ford said in We're No. 1! The Story of 1981 Clemson Football.
"But when you lose, you better handle them with kid gloves."
And that brings us to Dabo Swinney's current task of addressing his team's last 60 minutes of football.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has been more measured over the last 48 hrs after giving a harsh appraisal of his team's performance immediately following the Tigers' loss to Notre Dame. (Ken Ruinard - USA Today Sports)
If you tuned in to his formal press conference Tuesday, or read a transcript of it, you probably noticed his message was a bit more even-handed than what he presented late Saturday night after the bloodletting in South Bend.
The talk of the "ass kicking" was toned down some in favor of a bigger-picture, holistic view of success not always being measured by what's on the scoreboard.
The deflated, defeated expressions and responses we witnessed immediately after the game were replaced with a more positive outlook that included some perspective for folks who are ready for him to clean house. He basically said the championship-or-bust crowd is doomed to a lot of misery because that achievement doesn't come around often.
"You're going to spend a lot of years down in the dumps, in the gutter," he said. "They went 35 years without winning one here. You're missing out on a lot of fun is all I can tell you."
A few players from the 2011 team just so happened to be in the building Monday during a hard day for everyone as the Notre Dame disintegration was put before everyone in full detail.
Dalton Freeman, Jarvis Jenkins, Andre Branch, and Kourtnei Brown provided a reminder of the day when sealing a trip to Charlotte for the ACC Championship brought delirious celebration.
Back then, everyone was on top of the world when the Tigers held off Wake Forest 31-28 to punch their ticket.
A few weeks later, after humiliating road losses to N.C. State and South Carolina, Swinney's third team unexpectedly upended Virginia Tech to bring home the school's first conference title in two decades.
In the aftermath, he went strong on the segment of the fan base that he perceived to have bailed after the third straight loss to the Gamecocks.
Probably too strong:
"This isn't for everybody," he said on the field. "This is only for the fans who were all in all the freaking time."
He's older and wiser now, and probably wouldn't clap back to that degree in the same situation. But he's never going to just totally ignore the nastiness that comes from outside during some of the rare dark moments.
Saturday, Clemson's spot in Charlotte was assured when Pittsburgh beat Syracuse. But even the players didn't really even want to talk about it Monday because the Notre Dame debacle still stung so much.
It's simply the nature of the beast to be less satisfied with accomplishments that have stacked up like cordwood over the last decade. It's ultimately a tribute to what Swinney has built that the ceiling a decade ago (conference title) now seems closer to the floor, and there's a sense of emptiness when a playoff trip seems unlikely.
But it's also a fact of life that a smart, calculating head coach is not going to hurl unadulterated criticism at his team publicly in the wake of an unadulterated disappointment.
Quite often, the front-facing words are different from what is said behind closed doors. Some fans out there justifiably want answers in the wake of poor performance. Accountability to the outside world is part of a head coach's responsibility, but some folks wrongly define accountability as a full-scale inquisition in which a coach is supposed to comprehensively excavate every single thing that went wrong, and every single thing he's doing to fix what went wrong.
We can tell you that excavation is absolutely happening. But it's not up to a leader to publicize every nuance of that excavation as if he's on the stand in a criminal trial.
One week, fans are grousing about the media being too critical of their team. The next week they're saying the media isn't critical enough. They want a comprehensive inquisition of the head coach that satisfies every angry question they have, but that's not realistic here or anywhere else. Sometimes you have to read between the lines.
When the Tigers were 4-3 last year, it felt every bit like they were careening off the tracks and to a place this program hasn't visited in some time.
Somehow he and they kept it all together. It wasn't just dumb luck.
Ten wins from that team, with all those frailties, was an accomplishment. And Swinney's ability to balance the scrutiny with the positivity certainly was an ingredient in that turnaround.
That has to be one of the most difficult parts of coaching: Bringing unsparing critique that is necessary after a comprehensive debacle, but taking care to balance it with humanity and goodwill that keep a team and a culture together.
There is plenty of reason for distress on the outside. While Swinney has painted the Notre Dame game as a complete surprise that came out of nowhere, there were cracks apparent before then.
After the Florida State game, defensive tackles coach Nick Eason spoke of trying to pull the "eye of the Tiger" out of some guys. But then he said you're either born with it or you're not.
Not long thereafter, K.J. Henry expressed some similar sentiments.
And then earlier this week, Tyler Davis was asked how a defense that was supposed to be made for such a rugged, big-boy challenge could wilt so thoroughly.
"Mindset," he said.
Soon thereafter we asked Wes Goodwin for his perspective on Davis' assessment.
"I think physicality is a mindset that everyone has to show up with. I think that's an intrinsic, inside-out thought process. Maybe guys didn't show up with the right mindset from that standpoint."
Goodwin was asked if that surprised him, given how much talent and veteran experience returned on his defense this season.
"When you're dealing with young men, sometimes we let outside forces dictate our mindset for whatever reason," he said. "But I don't question anybody's physicality or toughness at all on our defense."
These are not comforting observations to hear this late in a season. Not about a defense that most everyone thought would be great entering the year.
Combine overall underachievement on defense with overall fragility on the offensive side, and you get a team that is facing a reckoning here in early November.
How is this group going to be defined and remembered? For a while they were taking incremental steps forward even if they weren't putting a complete game together.
Now some incremental steps the other way produced a complete faceplant, and behind closed doors the players and coaches are certainly hearing about it.
But in public the head coach is protecting his guys. Unforgiving condemnation would probably be a bit much given that such a thing is already coming plenty from all angles.
While it's true that Clemson hasn't been physically manhandled much if at all over the last decade like it was Saturday night, there have been some bad days here and there that made you wonder if they were going to recover.
Swinney's record is pretty good in pulling his team out of those dark places.
And if he's not hammering his guys publicly this week, he might get a nod of approval from the old-school coach who brought out the kid gloves every now and then back in the old days.
ON SALE: Clemson Christmas decorations, ornaments and holiday gear at The Tiger Fan Shop!
Up to 70% OFF on some items HERE!
The difficult parts of coaching
By: Larry Williams
CLEMSON -- In the recent ACC Network documentary on the 1981 national championship team, one of the underpinnings was the way a young disciple of Alabama and Bear Bryant handled things in practice.
Old-school (even for those days).
Relentless.
Unforgiving.
With one fascinating and important exception.
"Coach Bryant used to say you can treat them any way you want to treat them in practice as long as you win," Danny Ford said in We're No. 1! The Story of 1981 Clemson Football.
"But when you lose, you better handle them with kid gloves."
And that brings us to Dabo Swinney's current task of addressing his team's last 60 minutes of football.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has been more measured over the last 48 hrs after giving a harsh appraisal of his team's performance immediately following the Tigers' loss to Notre Dame. (Ken Ruinard - USA Today Sports)
If you tuned in to his formal press conference Tuesday, or read a transcript of it, you probably noticed his message was a bit more even-handed than what he presented late Saturday night after the bloodletting in South Bend.
The talk of the "ass kicking" was toned down some in favor of a bigger-picture, holistic view of success not always being measured by what's on the scoreboard.
The deflated, defeated expressions and responses we witnessed immediately after the game were replaced with a more positive outlook that included some perspective for folks who are ready for him to clean house. He basically said the championship-or-bust crowd is doomed to a lot of misery because that achievement doesn't come around often.
"You're going to spend a lot of years down in the dumps, in the gutter," he said. "They went 35 years without winning one here. You're missing out on a lot of fun is all I can tell you."
A few players from the 2011 team just so happened to be in the building Monday during a hard day for everyone as the Notre Dame disintegration was put before everyone in full detail.
Dalton Freeman, Jarvis Jenkins, Andre Branch, and Kourtnei Brown provided a reminder of the day when sealing a trip to Charlotte for the ACC Championship brought delirious celebration.
Back then, everyone was on top of the world when the Tigers held off Wake Forest 31-28 to punch their ticket.
A few weeks later, after humiliating road losses to N.C. State and South Carolina, Swinney's third team unexpectedly upended Virginia Tech to bring home the school's first conference title in two decades.
In the aftermath, he went strong on the segment of the fan base that he perceived to have bailed after the third straight loss to the Gamecocks.
Probably too strong:
"This isn't for everybody," he said on the field. "This is only for the fans who were all in all the freaking time."
He's older and wiser now, and probably wouldn't clap back to that degree in the same situation. But he's never going to just totally ignore the nastiness that comes from outside during some of the rare dark moments.
Saturday, Clemson's spot in Charlotte was assured when Pittsburgh beat Syracuse. But even the players didn't really even want to talk about it Monday because the Notre Dame debacle still stung so much.
It's simply the nature of the beast to be less satisfied with accomplishments that have stacked up like cordwood over the last decade. It's ultimately a tribute to what Swinney has built that the ceiling a decade ago (conference title) now seems closer to the floor, and there's a sense of emptiness when a playoff trip seems unlikely.
But it's also a fact of life that a smart, calculating head coach is not going to hurl unadulterated criticism at his team publicly in the wake of an unadulterated disappointment.
Quite often, the front-facing words are different from what is said behind closed doors. Some fans out there justifiably want answers in the wake of poor performance. Accountability to the outside world is part of a head coach's responsibility, but some folks wrongly define accountability as a full-scale inquisition in which a coach is supposed to comprehensively excavate every single thing that went wrong, and every single thing he's doing to fix what went wrong.
We can tell you that excavation is absolutely happening. But it's not up to a leader to publicize every nuance of that excavation as if he's on the stand in a criminal trial.
One week, fans are grousing about the media being too critical of their team. The next week they're saying the media isn't critical enough. They want a comprehensive inquisition of the head coach that satisfies every angry question they have, but that's not realistic here or anywhere else. Sometimes you have to read between the lines.
When the Tigers were 4-3 last year, it felt every bit like they were careening off the tracks and to a place this program hasn't visited in some time.
Somehow he and they kept it all together. It wasn't just dumb luck.
Ten wins from that team, with all those frailties, was an accomplishment. And Swinney's ability to balance the scrutiny with the positivity certainly was an ingredient in that turnaround.
That has to be one of the most difficult parts of coaching: Bringing unsparing critique that is necessary after a comprehensive debacle, but taking care to balance it with humanity and goodwill that keep a team and a culture together.
There is plenty of reason for distress on the outside. While Swinney has painted the Notre Dame game as a complete surprise that came out of nowhere, there were cracks apparent before then.
After the Florida State game, defensive tackles coach Nick Eason spoke of trying to pull the "eye of the Tiger" out of some guys. But then he said you're either born with it or you're not.
Not long thereafter, K.J. Henry expressed some similar sentiments.
And then earlier this week, Tyler Davis was asked how a defense that was supposed to be made for such a rugged, big-boy challenge could wilt so thoroughly.
"Mindset," he said.
Soon thereafter we asked Wes Goodwin for his perspective on Davis' assessment.
"I think physicality is a mindset that everyone has to show up with. I think that's an intrinsic, inside-out thought process. Maybe guys didn't show up with the right mindset from that standpoint."
Goodwin was asked if that surprised him, given how much talent and veteran experience returned on his defense this season.
"When you're dealing with young men, sometimes we let outside forces dictate our mindset for whatever reason," he said. "But I don't question anybody's physicality or toughness at all on our defense."
These are not comforting observations to hear this late in a season. Not about a defense that most everyone thought would be great entering the year.
Combine overall underachievement on defense with overall fragility on the offensive side, and you get a team that is facing a reckoning here in early November.
How is this group going to be defined and remembered? For a while they were taking incremental steps forward even if they weren't putting a complete game together.
Now some incremental steps the other way produced a complete faceplant, and behind closed doors the players and coaches are certainly hearing about it.
But in public the head coach is protecting his guys. Unforgiving condemnation would probably be a bit much given that such a thing is already coming plenty from all angles.
While it's true that Clemson hasn't been physically manhandled much if at all over the last decade like it was Saturday night, there have been some bad days here and there that made you wonder if they were going to recover.
Swinney's record is pretty good in pulling his team out of those dark places.
And if he's not hammering his guys publicly this week, he might get a nod of approval from the old-school coach who brought out the kid gloves every now and then back in the old days.
ON SALE: Clemson Christmas decorations, ornaments and holiday gear at The Tiger Fan Shop!
Up to 70% OFF on some items HERE!
