ESPN Analyst Calls 2021 Season Dabo Swinney’s ‘Best Coaching Job’ at Clemson

While Clemson’s 2021 season did not play out the way many had envisioned, there are some that think it was still Dabo Swinney’s best coaching job to date.

With the team losing multiple games in September for the first time since 2014, and with expectations being so high, some teams might have folded. Not Swinney’s Tigers and for that reason ESPN analyst Tom Luginbill recently chimed in on the job the head coach did navigating the season.

“For me, I think it was the best coaching job that Dabo Swinney and his coaching staff have done since he’s been at Clemson,” Luginbill said on The Packer and Durham Show. “To right that ship, to not allow things to go in the tank, not allow things to snowball downhill.”

With all the inconsistency on offense, including quarterback issues, and not to mention all the injuries, Luginbill thinks it was a masterful job by Swinney and his staff as the Tigers rebounded to finish 10-3.

“I look at Clemson, because Clemson a year ago took so much public heat because for the first time in a long time, things weren’t going well,” Luginbill said. “The quarterback was going down a path that was not good, wasn’t accurate, couldn’t get the ball downfield. And then you have opt-outs, you have injuries, and they start off and for the first time in gosh, I don’t know how long, they actually had to face some adversity and some criticism.

“When you’re going through that and you’ve had such a run where you haven’t had a lot of that, you haven’t had a lot of criticism, internally and externally, you haven’t had a lot of injuries, you haven’t had things that can seep into your locker room and your building as a negative. When you experience that and you haven’t, what’s the first thing that a lot of people do? They would fold. They would cower, they’d find a way to make excuses, because they don’t know how to respond to it. This team did the exact opposite.”