Analysis: Examining the year three dynamic

[LazyIslander]

A couple of points...

- Swinney took over a Clemson team that, at the time, had top 10 ranked neighbors. SC and FSU were in their prime during his tenure. Not at all unlike Clemson and GA are now for Muschamp. So that's not really different.

- Swinney's success can be directly tied to the brand of football he brought. Perhaps it wasn't a drastic change in philosophy, but it was sold that way. "The fun is in the winning" football, with high powered offenses, DJs spinning music at practices, dancing in the locker room, and a first-class media department to show it all made recruits seek out Clemson (not vice-versa).

- In contrast, Muschamp is well... boring. He brings no change, no excitement... nothing different. And no appearance of anything that differentiates his program from any other middle-of-the-pack program. He hopes to keep getting better at doing the same thing over and over. There is no change of offensive or defensive philosophy. Just hope for getting better players to run it.

This program needs a complete change of philosophy. Experiment. Try something new. The fear of failure, the fear of trying something new, is killing the program. All the excitement is gone.

It's almost too obvious. But the program will never be any different than it is today, until its willing to change and be different than it has been.

But the current staff is not even willing to try a different player at QB for a series. So it's no wonder that very few are optimistic that the Muschamp regime will ever succeed.

 

[paladin181]

Say what you like about "improvement" but undisciplined jaw-jacking and play are not excusable. I can handle talent gaps and small mistakes. Our players are making mistakes that high school kids shouldn't be making, much less major league college players. Rashad "Just throw it my way late in a game for a free PI call" Fenton is a key example of this. He's got Swearinger's attitude and little of his skill. Thank you, Rashad for playing for Carolina. I appreciate you deciding to come here. I don't appreciate you being good for 30 yards in pass interference or personal foul penalties a game by yourself.

This is an undisciplined team coached by a man who preaches discipline. We cannot succeed when we are making more bonehead mistakes. I can't call it improvement regardless of the record when we abandon the offense that works, leave a QB in who throws INTs in the end zone or had 9 (NINE!!!) yards passing in a half because his dad is on staff. I love Champ's attitude and his outwardly projected mentality. I HATE where we are right now with who he really is. There is a disconnect when he preaches strong running game but we're last in the league. There is a disconnect when he talks about discipline and we have several WR drops on easily catchable balls (I mean, 3 or 4 per WR per season is acceptable. 1 or 2 per game is not). There is a disconnect when we preach discipline and we are T-90th in the country with 7.3 penalties per game, and 99th in the country in penalty yards with 68.2 per game. Last year, in penalties per game we were 24th in penalties per game with 4.9 and 16th in penalty yards per game with 38.6. This is not in the remotest sense improvement.

I don't know what Champ's problem is overall. He says the right things to us, but the team reflects nothing of what he is saying. So either he teaches them differently than what he tells us he wants, or he doesn't have any control over the team. Either scenario is a loser in this case.

 

[rlw7353]

A couple of points...

- Swinney took over a Clemson team that, at the time, had top 10 ranked neighbors. SC and FSU were in their prime during his tenure. Not at all unlike Clemson and GA are now for Muschamp. So that's not really different.

- Swinney's success can be directly tied to the brand of football he brought. Perhaps it wasn't a drastic change in philosophy, but it was sold that way. "The fun is in the winning" football, with high powered offenses, DJs spinning music at practices, dancing in the locker room, and a first-class media department to show it all made recruits seek out Clemson (not vice-versa).

- In contrast, Muschamp is well... boring. He brings no change, no excitement... nothing different. And no appearance of anything that differentiates his program from any other middle-of-the-pack program. He hopes to keep getting better at doing the same thing over and over. There is no change of offensive or defensive philosophy. Just hope for getting better players to run it.

This program needs a complete change of philosophy. Experiment. Try something new. The fear of failure, the fear of trying something new, is killing the program. All the excitement is gone.

It's almost too obvious. But the program will never be any different than it is today, until its willing to change and be different than it has been.

But the current staff is not even willing to try a different player at QB for a series. So it's no wonder that very few are optimistic that the Muschamp regime will ever succeed.

i agree with you. the program needs to be more 'attractive', however you define that

 

[anon_n4c0cp5zhdxn7]

Muschamp has a track record. Datboy had not yet proven anything but he began to win quickly. Totally different. Tanner ignored history...at the university of Florida. That’s about as good a job as there is in college football. We can only hope. I hope i am completely wrong. The lack of improvement is a bad sign. Hope for the best

Perspective is interesting. Muschamp is 18-14 so far at USC. Dabo was 19-13 through same amount of games at Clemson. 19-13 is considered winning quickly but 18-14 is a "damn mess"?

 

[Chris Clark]

A couple of points...

- Swinney took over a Clemson team that, at the time, had top 10 ranked neighbors. SC and FSU were in their prime during his tenure. Not at all unlike Clemson and GA are now for Muschamp. So that's not really different.

- Swinney's success can be directly tied to the brand of football he brought. Perhaps it wasn't a drastic change in philosophy, but it was sold that way. "The fun is in the winning" football, with high powered offenses, DJs spinning music at practices, dancing in the locker room, and a first-class media department to show it all made recruits seek out Clemson (not vice-versa).

- In contrast, Muschamp is well... boring. He brings no change, no excitement... nothing different. And no appearance of anything that differentiates his program from any other middle-of-the-pack program. He hopes to keep getting better at doing the same thing over and over. There is no change of offensive or defensive philosophy. Just hope for getting better players to run it.

This program needs a complete change of philosophy. Experiment. Try something new. The fear of failure, the fear of trying something new, is killing the program. All the excitement is gone.

It's almost too obvious. But the program will never be any different than it is today, until its willing to change and be different than it has been.

But the current staff is not even willing to try a different player at QB for a series. So it's no wonder that very few are optimistic that the Muschamp regime will ever succeed.

I think you make a really good point on that one in that FSU (won a natty in 2013 but that was five years after Swinney took over) and South Carolina became good from 2010-2013, although 2010 was the only conference title game appearance USC had.

I don't think it's even arguable that South Carolina's roster and program as a whole when Muschamp took over was not where Clemson's was when Swinney took over. It wasn't great at Clemson by any means, but Clemson still had a staff that recruited well, didn't bottom out at winning three games and losing to The Citadel, etc.

And at that same time for USC, Clemson was already elite (Clemson won a national title in Muschamp's first season at USC, which certainly didn't happen in the opposite way for Swinney at Clemson) and Georgia still had a great roster and was right on the cusp either way.

In Swinney's interim season and first full season, FSU was 9-4 and 7-6 and USC was 7-6 and 7-6.

- As for the excitement/change part, I'd have to know what the change is relative to. Change in what? If it's a change from the way USC used to do things, just about everything is different.

USC has a DJ at practice and has had that for a while, the media department dramatically improved when Muschamp arrived and is widely considered one of the best in the country. The offense you referenced has not come at this point and that's one thing Muschamp has to fix. I'm not sure anyone could watch the games and not at least see the philosophical/scheme/tempo differences that USC has tried to put in. Because of the other issues offensively, it's caused some to completely dismiss this season or any chance to ever have a good offense under McClendon or Muschamp based on a six game sample. But yeah, that part has to get fixed.

USC runs one of the best summer camps in the country. It's one of the most affordable, and one way they lure a ton of guys every offseason. Some of the recruiting ideas they've had have been cutting edge, like having Fortnite up on a big screen during one of the big recruiting weekends - that's something nobody else had done to date and was a big hit.

He's not Dabo and never will be in personality. If you look around at coaches/programs across the country that have been successful, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Some of the best programs are more business-like. USC does plenty of fun stuff on the recruiting front. The facilities are getting better now that the university has invested in football for the first time ever.

Acquiring talent is the number one indicator of whether or not your program will be good, and then you have to have all the other stuff around it. And in my view from covering this program and its recruiting on a full-time basis since 2009, they're doing some things to improve in that regard.

I do not know how the tenure will ultimately turn out. I just don't agree that they don't try/do anything new or that everything is the same as its always been.

I agree with you that anything USC can do to make anything better, they need to do it.

 

[LazyIslander]

Maybe you're right... just keep doing what they're doing and keep trying to get better recruits. Every now and then adopt and implement some of the things the more successful programs are doing. It's bound to eventually work.

 

[Chris Clark]

Maybe you're right... just keep doing what they're doing and keep trying to get better recruits. Every now and then adopt and implement some of the things the more successful programs are doing. It's bound to eventually work.

I'm not saying USC has to only keep doing what its doing now. I mentioned there that there are still aspects of the program that can be improved. Anything cutting edge (it's not my job to figure out what that is, ha ha) should be done.

I was also just trying to point out that, from a fact standpoint, South Carolina has improved a lot from three years ago whether in recruiting operations/facilities/infrastructure/program marketing. I don't see how that could even be argued, frankly. Whether or not it helps lead to USC becoming a big-time, successful program, I don't know.

This program lagged behind so many others. Some of the things Muschamp has implemented were baseline, rudimentary things. Some have been more cutting edge or done better than others. Some things they still don't do as well.

But what you mentioned - try to get better players - is at the forefront of everything.

 

[Noonoo-33]

Say what you like about "improvement" but undisciplined jaw-jacking and play are not excusable. I can handle talent gaps and small mistakes. Our players are making mistakes that high school kids shouldn't be making, much less major league college players. Rashad "Just throw it my way late in a game for a free PI call" Fenton is a key example of this. He's got Swearinger's attitude and little of his skill. Thank you, Rashad for playing for Carolina. I appreciate you deciding to come here. I don't appreciate you being good for 30 yards in pass interference or personal foul penalties a game by yourself.

This is an undisciplined team coached by a man who preaches discipline. We cannot succeed when we are making more bonehead mistakes. I can't call it improvement regardless of the record when we abandon the offense that works, leave a QB in who throws INTs in the end zone or had 9 (NINE!!!) yards passing in a half because his dad is on staff. I love Champ's attitude and his outwardly projected mentality. I HATE where we are right now with who he really is. There is a disconnect when he preaches strong running game but we're last in the league. There is a disconnect when he talks about discipline and we have several WR drops on easily catchable balls (I mean, 3 or 4 per WR per season is acceptable. 1 or 2 per game is not). There is a disconnect when we preach discipline and we are T-90th in the country with 7.3 penalties per game, and 99th in the country in penalty yards with 68.2 per game. Last year, in penalties per game we were 24th in penalties per game with 4.9 and 16th in penalty yards per game with 38.6. This is not in the remotest sense improvement.

I don't know what Champ's problem is overall. He says the right things to us, but the team reflects nothing of what he is saying. So either he teaches them differently than what he tells us he wants, or he doesn't have any control over the team. Either scenario is a loser in this case.

Definitely a disconnect when it comes to translating to the field.

 

[4ever2thee]

I don't know.... Maybe completely different teams? Players? Circumstances?

Were you complaining so much when we won 9 games last year? Yes we have lost 3 games, but we had opportunities to win 2 of the 3, against top 15 opponents.

Perhaps you're just not a Muschamp fan so you will refuse to give any credit at all? It's hard to look at our 2019 recruiting class and not see improvement. It's hard to watch a game and not see how so many contributors are underclassmen recruited by Muschamp. If the recruiting momentum continues, and we continue to stack quality players each year, then we'll have the quality depth that we have not had in years.

I don't know what a Muschamp fan is. His kids? His wife? I've been quite clear that my allegiance is to the school, not the coach. This applies to any coach.

You are correct that I didn't complain much last year, except for the UK and Clemp debacles. But that doesn't mean my eyes were closed. We beat some pretty mediocre teams. With that said I give Muschamp credit for doing a nice job improving the team from 2 years ago. From all the cheerleading that goes on around here and other sites, it's hard for me to tell how well he's actually doing in recruiting. There seems to be a lot of activity, but the rankings seem no better. The results seem no better. This year appears to be a step back. We're still awfully thin at a number of spots. But, his effort certainly seems to be there. However, to me he's not a HC. His coordinator selections don't inspire me. His lack of offense has gone on long enough at 2 schools to be labeled a trait. Despite what Chris says I see nothing different than his UF days. Likewise, I see little different from the last 100 years of SC football.

 

[king ward]

I mean, perhaps, but we have no way of knowing that. Dabo was definitely a perfect fit for Clemson.

Maybe even at this stage in his career he'd go somewhere else and wouldn't do nearly as well (I don't think he'll ever leave and I wouldn't either). That's possible. There have been coaches that have been just OK at places and great at others, and vice versa. Fit is a big part of that.

Will Muschamp wasn't a fit at Florida and is a much better fit at South Carolina.

How much better remains to be seen.

 

[Cockish]

https://southcarolina.rivals.com/news/examining-the-year-three-dynamic

You make a good case but what is bothering my lay brain this season is the insistence of playing Bentley and not allowing SCAR to take one snap in the TA&M game (after he proved himself against Mizzou) and also the abandonment of the run when it is working. Are these obvious offensive team flaws part of a 3 yr new coaching trend?

 

[92Pony]

A couple of points...

- Swinney took over a Clemson team that, at the time, had top 10 ranked neighbors. SC and FSU were in their prime during his tenure. Not at all unlike Clemson and GA are now for Muschamp. So that's not really different.

- Swinney's success can be directly tied to the brand of football he brought. Perhaps it wasn't a drastic change in philosophy, but it was sold that way. "The fun is in the winning" football, with high powered offenses, DJs spinning music at practices, dancing in the locker room, and a first-class media department to show it all made recruits seek out Clemson (not vice-versa).

- In contrast, Muschamp is well... boring. He brings no change, no excitement... nothing different. And no appearance of anything that differentiates his program from any other middle-of-the-pack program. He hopes to keep getting better at doing the same thing over and over. There is no change of offensive or defensive philosophy. Just hope for getting better players to run it.

This program needs a complete change of philosophy. Experiment. Try something new. The fear of failure, the fear of trying something new, is killing the program. All the excitement is gone.

It's almost too obvious. But the program will never be any different than it is today, until its willing to change and be different than it has been.

But the current staff is not even willing to try a different player at QB for a series. So it's no wonder that very few are optimistic that the Muschamp regime will ever succeed.

I don't think this one point can be overstated. If you look at the years we beat cu 5 in a row, they were running a high powered offense, racking up big numbers against the A-she-she cupcakes. Our D kept them in check, mostly due to the fact that cu had not recruited well enough in the trenches (yet), whereas we had.

That high-powered offense was, IMO, very attractive to talented skill players; Watson, Watkins, Williams, etc. etc. Folks on our boards made fun of them for recruiting all of those 5* skill players while ignoring the need for skill in the trenches. Well, with that offense keeping the talented skill players rolling in, once they addressed the trenches..... you get what you have today. And it has become self-supporting. Once they got all phases up to snuff, talented players at ALL positions are interested in coming in and playing for a winning team.

IMO, it all started with that FUN brand of offense.

 

[uscnoklahoma2]

I don't think this one point can be overstated. If you look at the years we beat cu 5 in a row, they were running a high powered offense, racking up big numbers against the A-she-she cupcakes. Our D kept them in check, mostly due to the fact that cu had not recruited well enough in the trenches (yet), whereas we had.

That high-powered offense was, IMO, very attractive to talented skill players; Watson, Watkins, Williams, etc. etc. Folks on our boards made fun of them for recruiting all of those 5* skill players while ignoring the need for skill in the trenches. Well, with that offense keeping the talented skill players rolling in, once they addressed the trenches..... you get what you have today. And it has become self-supporting. Once they got all phases up to snuff, talented players at ALL positions are interested in coming in and playing for a winning team.

IMO, it all started with that FUN brand of offense.

Well it's fun to figure out what kind we are lol

 

[coxman]

Here here, an opportunity was missed after spurrier gave us a head start. I was astonished at muschamps nane coming up in our coaching search and even moreso when he was hired. Truly could not understand how we arrived at that point. This was the most important hire in the history of the athletic department as we had finally found some relevance and had an opportunity to truly keep the ball rolling. Again, things could have changed with a new offensive coordinator. It seems we settled. Seeing stupid play and then asinine statements in the media just fuels the fire. Our neighbors play for championships and we play for bowl eligibility. Not what i envisioned post spurrier.

Keep the ball rolling? Where? SOS, Ward, Adams, and Jr. had already dropped it over the cliff.