Clemson adds staff member with connection to Garrett Riley

Clemson has added Carson Cramer to its staff in an offensive player development role, a school official confirmed to Clemson Sports on Friday.

Cramer comes to Clemson from Mississippi State, where he worked as an offensive quality control coach under Mike Leach.

He spent three seasons with the Bulldogs, prior to coming to Clemson.

Cramer replaces Kaleb Nobles, who left earlier this offseason to take over the head coaching job at West Florida.

Cramer has also spent time on staff at Kansas and Oklahoma State. His time at Kansas overlapped with Garrett Riley, who was named the Tigers’ offensive coordinator last month.

He is familiar with the offense Riley is installing and should help Clemson’s players learn the system this spring.

Tigers coach Dabo Swinney mentioned earlier this month that he would be adding a staff member with a connection to Riley.

Riley won the Broyles Award last season, which is presented to the top assistant coach in college football. He helped TCU reach the national title game in his first season as the coordinator there.

Riley was previously the offensive coordinator at SMU in 2020 and 2021. He spoke earlier this month about his decision to leave TCU for Clemson.

“There’s just no question the amount of consistency that’s been here that coach Swinney’s developed and built. Kind of in totality of where they’re at as a program, where it can still go, and then just being able to experience this deal with him and see how he operates and just how this whole organization and the program and the town and the community, just the whole package. Just really made sense,” Riley said. “That’s what was important to me, was important to our family, that we were going to come into a situation that was like this with as stable as it is and consistent as it has been on and off the field. That’s certainly a draw to players and certainly a big draw to coaches, as well.”

Other support staff additions

In addition to Cramer, the Tigers made several other support staff moves this offseason.

Da’Quan Bowers is back on Clemson’s staff. Bowers will work in defensive player development for the Tigers after spending the past three years at USF.

Bowers coached as an assistant at USF with former Bulls head coach Jeff Scott, who also left Clemson to go to USF after the 2019 season. Bowers served as the defensive line coach for the Bulls.

He previously worked alongside Todd Bates as a grad assistant with the Tigers in 2018 and 2019.

Swinney also announced that Will Gilchrist will work with the Clemson special teams unit moving forward after previously working at USF.

Gilchrist was a quality control analyst with an emphasis on special teams at USF. He also spent time as a defensive grad assistant at Arkansas.

As for other staff changes, Swinney announced that Clemson has hired a new nutritionist.

Meaghan Turcotte has been hired as the team’s head nutritionist after spending last year as the head nutritionist at Miami. The Clemson grad spent the previous two years as the Assistant Director of Football Nutrition for the University of Georgia, prior to joining the Hurricanes staff.

Swinney also announced that JT Bandy has been hired as an operations assistant.