CLEMSON — Clemson had its second stadium scrimmage Thursday and Dabo Swinney just visited with us afterward.
A few of the more notable items:
— He said it was their worst practice of August. Just way too many mental errors on both sides. He said there’s a reason they stopped practicing on the first day of classes, because those were usually always bad. Yesterday was the first day of school and still some of those same problems, he said. Stupid penalties, dumb stuff. Bad situational awareness. Too many lapses of discipline.
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One caveat, though: The staff held a bunch of established guys.
“I limited a lot of dudes who we know are game-ready,” he said. “We wanted to challenge the guys who think they are game-ready, and some of them got baptized.”
He said this will be good film, though, as some of the guys are going to get their feelings hurt during the review.
— I asked him about the quarterbacks. He said he didn’t think any of them were good today.
— I asked him to evaluate Andy Burburija’s overall body of work from the past few weeks. He said the defensive tackle is going to be a good player, and he’s who Swinney thought he was.
“A space eater. Powerful.”
— But when the subject turned to the defensive tackle room as a whole, Swinney continued the “bunch of nobodies” theme.
He said every other position has an alpha, but not this one.
He said Amare Adams is probably the closest to being that alpha.
“Need him to take that next step.”
He said Burburija just got here so it’s hard to expect him to be that right now.
Markus Strong has shown flashes but is still the new guy coming in.
He said Kourtney Kelly was an alpha type but he’s recovering from the torn ACL.
Vic Burley just returned from injury, and Champ Thompson “was out for a little while” but is back.
Swinney was actually impressed by some of what he saw of Burley today.
— Jay Haynes is “not quite” back yet, Swinney said. He was close to returning at one point but then had another setback.
— TJ Moore is “close” to returning, Swinney said. He said Moore is doing fine.
— Seems like four of the five offensive line starting spots are settled. Right guard, not so much. Swinney said that’s still a battle between Ronan O’connell and Tucker Kattus.
— Corian Gipson seems to have locked up the starting nickel job.
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“He’s an elite football player at any position. He could probably start five positions for us.”
— Juju Preston has been banged up recently after a really nice start to fall camp.
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— He said Cole Turner was here for the first day of camp but has been gone since. Said he’s not sure when he’ll be back.
— He said Dietrick Pennington will play both offensive line and defensive tackle.
He said they decided to try him on defense to put his “big ol’ butt in there.”
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