Dabo Swinney defends Clemson’s rotation on defensive line

Amid a 1-2 start to the season at Clemson, just about everything is under scrutiny. Even things that haven’t changed in quite some time, according to coach Dabo Swinney.

Reporters stopped to ask this week about the team’s heavy rotation along the defensive front, wondering if that’s keeping the unit from reaching its full potential. Swinney brushed aside the question.

“We’ve rotated forever around here. Yeah. Yeah,” Swinney said. “Best defense in the country 2014. I mean we rotated five D-tackles and we rotated four D-ends, like, we rotated Shaq Lawson, Vic Beasley, Kevin Dodd, Corey Crawford, Tavaris Barnes. We played five ends every game. Five D-tackles. DJ Reader, Grady Jarrett, DeShawn Williams, Josh Watson, Carlos Watkins. I mean yeah. Just play all them guys.”

The reporter who had asked Dabo Swinney about the rotation then pointed out that Clemson was among the best defensive lines in the country that year. That doesn’t appear to be the case this year through the first three games.

“We did, we were No. 1 in the country,” Swinney said. “But we rotated them all year.”

The implication from the line of questioning, of course, is that Clemson might be better served by not rotating quite as much. Allowing guys like Peter Woods and TJ Parker to be on the field for more snaps might equal better production.

Dabo Swinney didn’t necessarily agree. Or at least his reasoning for the team’s issues was a little different.

“How many points did we give up to LSU?” he asked. “Is that good enough to win defensively? Should be. They gave up seven against Troy and they gave up 21 against Georgia Tech. So I’m not saying we’re dominating people, but it’s a long season. And you’ve got to… where we’ve got to be better defensively is third down. That’s where we’ve got to be better. And we’ve got to get off the field a little bit more.”

Dabo Swinney then turned the question entirely around on the reporter. He put the ball in his court.

“Who do you not want us to play?” Swinney asked. “Well, we’re going to play the guys that deserve to play. They can’t play every snap. We’ve got to have a rotation in the D-line. We don’t play anybody that doesn’t rotate D-linemen. They can’t play every snap. The guys have to play. We’ve got to make sure we develop some depth as we go through the season at a critical position. It’s a very critical position to have some depth.”