Losing Faith

By The Avenue of Champions

This winter when Terry Don Phillips hired Dabo Swinney and signed him to one of the lowest contracts of any coach at the BCS level, much was made of Phillips' promises to make that up to Swinney in the salaries of additional support personnel.

So far, some of those promises have been realized, with the additions of Woody McCorvey as director of football operations and Mike Dooley as director of High School relations. However, other positions have not materialized as promised.

A recent example of Phillips failing to go to bat for the football team occurred with Clemson Football Chaplain Tony Eubanks. As many of you know Tony Eubanks has been the Team Chaplin since 2003. Eubanks has led many of our players to Christ and is an instrumental mentor that is key in helping our players lead positive lives not only while at Clemson but long after they leave.


Tony Eubanks
Heart & Soul of Clemson Football

According to anonymous sources inside the Athletic Department in the week leading up to our game against Middle Tennessee State, our Athletic Director sided with Assistant AD Katie Hill in trying to eliminate Eubanks' role with the team. A near mutiny amongst some of the players and a few of the coaches almost occurred, with players threatening to leave the program and coaches willing to resign their positions in outrage. Dabo Swinney himself was forced to go to the mat for Eubanks. Phillips backed-down, temporarily, in response and allowed Eubanks to remain as Team Chaplin.

Does this sound like an athletic director giving Dabo Swinney total support and making good on the promises he made when he hired Dabo last December?

Brad Scott Isn't Getting The Job Done

By The Avenue of Champions

Scott built-up reputation as one of the finest offensive line coaches in the country working for Bobby Bowden at FSU from 1987-1993 during a time when the Seminoles made it look easy on the field. The Seminoles embarrassed every team in the ACC in 1992 and 1993.

Scott used the Seminoles 1993 National Championship to springboard into the HC position at University of South Carolina in 1994 and led the Gamecocks to a 7-6 record and a Carquest Bowl victory in his first season. The success was short lived as South Carolina went an embarrassing 1-10 in 1998 and Scott was subsequently fired. Scott’s tenure laid the groundwork for a record 21 consecutive losses that showed an obvious inability to find, develop and coach-up talent.



Brad Scott Laying The Foundation For 21 Straight Losses.

Tommy Bowden brought Scott to Clemson as a position coach and after moving from TE to OC, Scott ultimately found himself in charge of the offensive line at Clemson in 2004. In Clemson first year under Scott, Clemson rolled out a starting unit of Jesse Pickens, Cedric Johnson, Tommy Sharp, Nathan Bennett and Marion Dukes to start the season and looked absolutely terrible culminating in a humiliating performance by the OL in College Station against Texas A&M. People questioned Scott for starting a walk-on at OT and OC and eventually Barry Richardson replaced Pickens and the line improved a little as the year progressed.

In 2005, Clemson returned 3 starters in Richardson, Bennett and Dukes and replaced the undersized Sharp with Dustin Fry a player that most pundits thought should have started over Sharp in 2004. The line showed improvement from the previous year buoyed by to naturally tough guards in Nathan Bennett and Roman Fry and by the end of the season was a pretty good unit overall.

In 2006, Clemson returned all 5 starters and not surprisingly for a team with 100s of starts combined played very well through the GT game until Roman Fry went down with an injury against GT and the lack of depth at OG caused the line play to suffer tremendously.

In 2007, Clemson had to replace the entire line with new starters with the exception of Barry Richardson who was basically the same player in 2004 as in 2007 after showing little improvement under Scott. The line struggled against average defensive teams and showed marginal improvement as the season progressed.

In 2008, Clemson faced a multitude of injuries and ended up starting a different starting five almost every game for the entire season. The only thing consistent with the line in 2008 was that they were consistently terrible and showed little improvement as the season progressed.

In 2009, Clemson returned every player on the two-deep with the exception of Bobby Hutchinson and thus far the line has been the weakest link on the team struggling with the less than imposing front-fours of MTSU and GT.

Clemson doesn’t have the luxury of hand-picking Rivals100 talent like Scott did at FSU during the late 80s and early 90s and thus has to rely heavily on Scott’s scouting ability to find diamonds in the rough and Scott’s coaching skills to develop them into talented football players.

Here is a look at the players Scott has hand-selected as offensive line coach.

2005
Thomas Austin – Solid player
Jamarcus Grant - Bust
Barry Humpries - Bust
Cory Lambert – The Matador
Quentez Ruffin - Bust

2006
Jamal Medlin - Bust
Chris Hairston - Solid Player

2007
Mason Cloy – Solid Player
Wilson Norris - Incomplete
David Smith – Back-up
Landon Walker – Back-up behind The Matador (now starting)

Scott has landed 3 players out of our SR, JR and SO on this team that can be considered solid players and all but 1 of the under-the-radar players (Hairston) that Scott has landed have been busts. Even the 4-Star recruits that had a grab bag of offers coming out of High School like Lambert and Walker have underachieved and failed to live up to their potential under Scott.

The lack of depth is also a constant issue with the team. The offensive line is always one injury away from catastrophe. Catastrophe that was realized when Roman Fry went down in 2006 and was realized last year when the OL had a couple of players rotating on and off the trainers table. Of course it doesn’t help that seemingly every OT that Scott recruits ends up being better suited for OG, which leaves us without options at OT and somehow also thin at OG.

Scott is a great person, is a outstanding communicator with high school coaches and was a very good recruiter to boot but in recent years hasn’t recruited with the level of effort required, but as far as evaluating talent and coaching-up talent Scott fails to measure up to his peers. Scott’s lines consistently lack toughness, consistently fail to open up holes in the running game and consistently allow pressure on the QB in passing situations. The players deserve better. The players deserve a coach that is going to coach them up. The players deserve coach that is going to maximize their ability and a coach that is going to get them to the NFL.

Sadly the players are getting none of that under Scott’s watch.

Hopefully that will change in 2010.