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CLEMSON -- If you follow Clemson football and have a good recall of the Tigers' history under Dabo Swinney, you can't listen to him talk about Wake Forest's offense without thinking of what he said about his own offense in January of 2011.

As the Tigers concluded their offense-challenged slog in Swinney's second full season, he concluded that he had to make big changes on offense.

He wanted a scheme that was different from what others were doing in the ACC. Part of this idea was likely fueled by watching his defense have to forget everything it knew once a year as it prepared to face Paul Johnson's flexbone offense. That annual nightmare alone was a testament to the value of presenting something defenses were not used to seeing.

But part of it, too, was rooted in Swinney's desire to be ahead of the curve and innovative. And at that time, a first-year Tulsa assistant named Chad Morris had such a philosophy for attacking defenses after learning the so-called smash-mouth spread under Gus Malzahn.