CLEMSON | For the most part, the emotional impact of a shockingly bad season is kept within as Clemson's football program tries to keep going, keep it all together and keep hoping somehow this thing will turn around.

Over the years, Clemson fans have taken delight in assorted collapses and dumpster fires elsewhere. The tribal, devilish satisfaction is rooted partly in the assurance it'll never happen to their team.

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Now that it feels like a downtown parade will be justified if and when this bunch manages to get past 20 points, fans are promising themselves they'll never complain again about boredom over regular-season blowouts at Death Valley.

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So far we've witnessed powerful images of a staff and players who are trying to come to grips with the present realities. Early in the season Matt Bockhorst lashed out over the struggles of his offensive line and the criticism from outside.

Over Brent Venables' first nine seasons, we can't recall an instance of him getting weepy in a press conference. Twice this season -- at N.C. State, after Bryan Bresee's season-ending knee injury, and earlier this week in response to Bockhorst's season-ending knee injury -- Venables became choked up and had to stop to compose himself.

Amid all that, we don't get the sense that this thing has gone off the rails. We don't get the feeling that the people inside the football building are as eager as some on the outside to go ahead, chalk up the season as an abject failure and fast-forward to making the changes necessary to getting Clemson back where it wants to be.

That, of course, is going to be the most fascinating and captivating question moving forward with a seventh consecutive playoff appearance off the table and seemingly slim chances of a seventh straight ACC title.

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It is hard to see Dabo Swinney standing totally pat with his staff and his record of not bringing in transfers. Beyond that, it is impossible to predict the extent of whatever changes he will make after the season.

The extent could be determined in part by what happens from this point forward. Because yes, there are still games to be played and still reason to think this season could end up producing some positive vibes and an upward trajectory.

Six years ago, when elite status was all new and Clemson was a media darling as it was putting the finishing touches on an undefeated regular season, Swinney was asked about his proactive mindset and the vision that lifted Clemson from a reactionary underachiever into a forward-thinking trendsetter. Plans had just been announced for the building of the $55 million operations facility, and the football program was known as a pioneer in the social-media space.

This was when the thought of a mere one trip to the playoffs was enough to bring lasting glee to Clemson fans. They had beaten Florida State for the first time since 2011, and it felt like the Tigers were eclipsing the giant Jimbo Fisher had built. The five-game losing streak to South Carolina had been snapped the previous season, and now Steve Spurrier had walked away from the Gamecocks midseason.

Clemson wasn't just the hot new thing. Events elsewhere were crystallizing the idea that it was also an ascending monster that had been methodically built over time, with no corners cut, and was built to last.

And something Swinney said then on the way to the top might tell us something about his big-picture view of where things stand at present.

“In the business world, you look at the old bell curve of a business," he said in November of 2015. "You’ve got the birth. You’ve got the growth. You’ve got plateau. You’ve got decline. And you’ve got death. Those great businesses out there, those great programs, they don’t plateau. So how do you do that? You have to constantly reinvent, reinvest, reset, learn, grow. You change. You have to do that. You don’t just change to change, but you have to always challenge yourself each and every year and make sure, 'OK, this may be how we’ve done it, but is it still the right way?' At least ask those type of questions.

"I think every successful business, every consistent program, that’s a mentality. You can’t be satisfied. Because just as soon as you think you’ve arrived and you’re satisfied, then you plateau and then the next thing you know you’re on that decline. Now you’re not paying attention to the little things. You don’t have the sense of urgency because you’re fat and happy. And then it’s death. The business is closed, or whatever.”

Even from an objective outside perspective, it seems preposterous to conclude this is the death of a program or anything close to it. A 4-3 record is startling almost solely because of the sustained, stupendous achievement that preceded it -- a 79-7 record and two national titles from 2015-20, with two of the losses coming to the greatest dynasty the game has ever seen (Alabama) and one to perhaps the greatest offense the game has ever seen (LSU).

For most Clemson fans, in 2015 simply being in the playoff created warm and fuzzy vibes and anything else beyond that was gravy. Five years later, they walked away from the Superdome wondering why in the hell they spent all that money to go to New Orleans and watch Clemson get its tail kicked.

No one is saying fans should've just been happy to be there in 2020 the same way they were in 2015. The increasingly casual response to those playoff trips was more human nature than an indictment of a spoiled fan base.

But here in the present, as you think back to the way you greeted each CFP trip as they piled up to six in a row, surely a part of you is acknowledging that maybe you didn't fully and sufficiently appreciate an achievement that should be considered special no matter how many times you do it.

So reasonable people can agree that 4-3 after 79-7 does not equate to the close of business. Reasonable people with even a rudimentary recall of the Swinney Era can also agree that it's not smart to assume this coach can't or won't do something.

While some complain about Swinney saying this team isn't far from a much better record (they're also a few plays away from 1-6), or repeatedly saying they're right around the corner from turning things around on offense (six games under 20 points in regulation is a bit of a trend), the much more notable and telling statements from the 13th-year head coach have been his showing a clear understanding and acknowledgement of how bad things are.

He has called the offensive spiral a "stink" that they can't seem to shake. He has said the Tigers are "a very immature, very young and very unconfident offense. That's for sure."

On the few past occasions when things were going off the rails -- a 6-7 season in 2010, and in 2011 when the Tigers were getting blown out in three of their last four regular-season games -- Swinney rarely if ever shared such revealing insights in the moment; it was after the season when the true candor would come.

And while we'll likewise hear his most sober evaluations after this season, he's been extraordinarily transparent already.

At present, Swinney is insistent that this program is on a solid foundation. He said he has no idea whether it's harder to get to the top or stay there because he starts from scratch every year and rebuilds everything while inspecting every nuance of the program.

He said there's plenty of evidence of that solid foundation, most notably in the form of how numerous players have pushed through pain. Tyler Davis and Tre Williams weren't expected to play this time last week, but they both pushed through and combined to play 63 snaps. Davis hadn't practiced in five weeks.

Swinney said there have been other examples of that emotional and physical toughness, such as James Skalski fighting through a series of shoulder stingers and EJ Williams playing through a broken finger and injured knee that required surgery. And Bockhorst fighting through years of injuries and surgeries before his torn ACL last week.

That type of commitment, and example, is what brought Venables to tears this week.

"Tyler came back a couple weeks early, and he was determined to," Venables said. "I mean just busting it to try to come back. That's how much these guys care. Tre will have to have surgery after the season, and it hasn't been easy for him. He's a beat up young guy, and a lot of times young guys are immature so they face a little adversity or face some pain, it's easy to check out -- 'I'm going to go ahead and get this (surgery) done' -- and you wouldn't blame them if they did. But a guy like that's like, 'Nah. What do you mean, done? I got January to be done. I'll get that surgery then.' So you just have a great appreciation and thankfulness and love for your players, and what being on this team means to them."

Come bowl season there will be the question of how many guys choose to opt out of something far beneath the locales and stages this program is used to. If and when that happens Clemson will be confronted with a surreal reality it has witnessed only from afar in the past as it prepared to play for it all while coaches elsewhere tried to hold things together.

But as breathtaking as it's been to see a number of streaks tumble in recent weeks, there are still some worth playing for and being proud of.

Since that 2016 loss to Pitt when it felt like the world was ending, the Tigers have won 31 straight at Death Valley.

Since that 6-7 season when it felt like they'd never win 10 games in a million years, they are trying to extend that streak to 11 years in a row.

They haven't lost to Florida State since 2014, and haven't to South Carolina since 2013.

Maybe more streaks fall, maybe not.

But in a year when everyone around these parts has learned the hard way that nothing is guaranteed, what is assured is five more chances on the schedule to get this thing turned in the right direction.

Has this program reached a plateau? How much reinvention, resetting, learning, growing and changing will be necessary as the man who earned his master's degree in business administration evaluates where Clemson's program is on the old bell curve of birth, growth, plateau, decline and death?

For six straight years, the most consequential and interesting things with Clemson football happened in December and January.

The same could well be true this time, only not on a football field but in the head coach's corner office.

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