Dabo Swinney expands on why Clemson made a change at offensive coordinator

Clemson opted for Garrett Riley over Brandon Streeter at offensive coordinator, a change made by Dabo Swinney.

The Tigers weren’t bad last season, but they didn’t live up to expectations of a national title contender throughout the season. Swinney decided to make a change on his staff and poached Riley from TCU. 

Swinney joined Greg McElroy on Always College Football and expanded on why they made the change at offensive coordinator.

“Anytime you make personnel decisions, it’s hard,” Swinney said. “Especially when you love the people involved, whether it’s a player, you’re promoting a player or another guy, or you’ve been at the pro level and you understand where, you know, how that whole world operates. Or you’re dealing with a staff change, and we haven’t had a lot of staff change. We’ve had some. I made a change with Billy Napier back in 2010, and it was the right move for me and him. He’s now the head coach for Florida. I made a change with Kevin Steele … It’s not like these are bad coaches. But sometimes there’s a change that needs to be made. And the biggest thing for us, we had a great run for a long time. I mean, Chad Morris did a great job a few years ago, and then when he left in ‘14, it was easy for me to promote Tony Elliott. 

“Then we went on the best five year run in the history of Clemson football. I mean, we won more games than anybody in a five year span with Tony, calling all the plays.” 

Swinney made it clear Streeter was the right man for the job before opting for Riley after the 2022 campaign.

“And then when Tony got the Virginia job, Brandon Streeter, he coached Deshaun (Watson) for two years, he recruited Trevor (Lawrence) coached Trevor, recruited D.J. (Uiagalelei),” Swinney said. “He deserved the opportunity and he had earned the opportunity and the tough part about it was we got better this year in a lot of areas. We really got better from where we were. 2021 was a really weird year for us, and we got better. 

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“But you know, when it was all said and done, and you evaluate every year like you always do, I just felt like we just weren’t quite where we needed to be. And sometimes you just need a change of voice and changing energy, maybe a change in demeanor or confidence or whatever it may be. And so, you know, that’s really kind of where it was.”