Dabo Swinney evaluates play of cornerbacks in season opener

Clemson‘s defense picked up right where they left off from last season in their opener versus Georgia Tech, holding the Yellow Jackets to just ten points in their season opening matchup. The Tigers played three cornerbacks in a starting rotation, as Nate Wiggins, Sheridan Jones, and Fred Davis II split reps in week 1. Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney spoke on his trio of corners and their performances in their 2022 season opener.

“Yeah we’ve got three starters, Sheri, and Nate, and Fred, and they all did some good things, all did some bad things,” Swinney said. “Too many missed tackles and we dropped a pick-six, great break on the ball by Nate, that’s a walk in right there. So that’s a play we gotta make, our next goal is to win the division, if we’re gonna win the division we gotta make that play.”

Wiggins may have missed on a scoring opportunity, but still got a pass break up for the play, the only one of the day for the three starters. Jones ended the game with three tackles and Davis had two, as Swinney elaborated on what they did well and what still needs to be worked on.

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“We had a couple just technical things that we can clean up, a couple of the screens, but I thought they did a solid job. Played the ball, they averaged 4.5 a catch so that’s really good, they were two of 16 on third down, that’s really good,” Swinney said.

A three cornerback starting rotation isn’t very common in football, and it will be interesting to see if Swinney keeps his rotation moving forward or narrows it down to just two, consistent starters. Regardless, having too much depth is definitely always a good problem to have, especially in the secondary where third-down scenarios will allow the Tigers to play multiple defensive backs at once.

Swinney seems to have a good pulse on the state of his cornerback room, as they head into a week 2 matchup versus Furman where he can hopefully see more out of his starting corners and some of his younger talent similar to week 1.

“So I think they did a nice job, and those three guys are definitely kind of where it starts for us right now, and then we’ve got some other guys in there that got a little bit of experience as well,” Swinney said.