Dabo's Master Plan - Part 2

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Almost two years ago Tigerillustrated.com sat down with several key members of Clemson's football program to get a behind-the-scenes look at head football coach Dabo Swinney.

By request, Tigerillustrated.com is re-releasing these LENGTHY, one-on-one interviews as part of our College Football Playoff week content lineup.

We would also like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! -- Owner-Publisher, Cris Ard

PART 2: Senior writer Larry Williams sits down with Clemson co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott, who has been on Swinney's staff since 2008.

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You really can’t appreciate Coach Swinney fully unless you’re behind the scenes, in the team meetings and in the staff meetings. A lot of people see Coach Swinney’s enthusiasm, his excitement on the sidelines, his contagious personality and his attitude of belief that permeates to our players. But what the general public is not able to see is how special he is behind closed doors.

Most teams start the day with a special-teams coach in front of the room, and as soon as the guys are there and they have their meeting they start talking about punt team. We’ve never done that at Clemson.

Ever since Coach Swinney has been here, we have started every single day with VOD. That stands for video of the day. It will just be a two- or three-minute video as we start the meeting. Some days it’s inspirational. Some days it may be a comedy to kind of break things up. But most times it’s inspirational and it has a point. And then Coach Swinney will follow that up by talking to the team for three to five minutes, really sharing life lessons or things he wants to pour into the team. It’s his way to continue to spread his message to the team, to the staff and to the players every single day.

One of the things he also does in that team meeting every day is he puts up a picture of a windshield. It’s got this really big windshield, as if we’re traveling down this road, and it’s got the rear-view mirror. And whatever we’ve done in the past is written in the rear-view mirror. Years of 10-plus-win seasons, CFP appearances and the 2016 national championship – all of that is put in the rear-view mirror. And whatever we’re doing that day or that week or that segment is on the windshield. His message to the team is, Hey, it’s all about what’s next. Everything that we’ve accomplished, that’s great. But it’s in the rear-view mirror. And if you’re driving down the road and all you’re doing is staring at the rear-view mirror, you’re going to crash. You’re not going to be able to stay on course. There’s a reason they made that windshield a lot bigger than they made that rear-view mirror. It’s because we always have to have our eyes on what’s next.

ALSO READ: Dabo's Master Plan - Part 1 | Christmas Eve Insider Recruiting Notes | 35 years of Clemson's recruiting classes | Talent gap continues to widen in ACC | Clemson's level of recruiting provides no shortage of options

It would be easy for a coach to come in one day and share that at the beginning of fall camp, make his point and move on. But Coach Swinney does that every single week during the season. Every single Monday he puts that up there. And he doesn’t have to say a whole lot about it. Same thing after the loss to Pitt: Hey guys, Pitt’s in the rear-view mirror. We’ve got to be able to press on and get ready for the next group. There’s a ton of examples of things like that in which he is very purposeful in his message and in his approach.

I’ve been very fortunate that I’m one of the few coaches who have been on staff with him from interim all the way through. I’ve been able to see how he has slowly changed the culture over time. And it didn’t just happen overnight. It was the consistency of him spending that extra time with the team. He firmly believes that if we can develop and build the right culture then everything else will take care of itself. I feel like with a lot of coaches, it’s all about football and all about what we’re doing that day. With Coach Swinney, he spends more time pouring into our guys and sharing messages and stories that are really outside just the X’s and O’s of football.

I saw a stat recently that said over the last six years (through 2016) we are 20-3 in games decided by a touchdown or less. That’s the best in the country, and Oklahoma State was the next team with a 16-6 record. So why are we winning close games? It’s not just because we’ve got great players. There are a lot of teams out there who have great players. There have been other things behind the scenes that have been poured into our guys over time. And a lot of it is that attitude of belief, that focus on what’s next.

When we start in late July, we’ll have our All-In Meetings with the staff. It’s four days where we’ll go through this book that’s over 250 pages. I’ve been with Coach Swinney now going on eight years, and he goes through that book every single page as if it’s the first time anybody in that room has seen that book. And he’ll read the same stories in a book that is filled with all kinds of important messages.

Coach Swinney’s organization is unbelievable. He has a great knack for not being a micromanager, but having everything planned out and laid out. Every coach, every staff member knows exactly what their role is. He’s going to hold you accountable to your role, but he’s going to do it in a way that he’s empowering you to do that. He literally has it all planned out with a job description for every single staff member.

He’ll go through every single one of those and say, “Did I leave anything out? Is there anything we added last year?” It takes time to go through all those things, and I think a lot of coaches get to that part and take it for granted and then move on and talk ball. We spend four days doing that. It’s from 8 to 5. They bring in breakfast and lunch. And we don’t get to talking football until the fourth day. I’d say just 20 percent is about offense, defense, special teams. Eighty percent is about the program, the year, the approach over that period.

The organization behind the scenes, it takes a lot of work to do that. I think sometimes coaches hire a lot of staff and they just delegate all that out, and they know a little bit about what’s going on. I think Coach Swinney has a very unique ability to empower his staff, not be a micromanager, but at the same time have a great plan for everything in the program. He’s going to tell you exactly how he wants it done, and then he’s going to allow you to go do your job. As a coach, that’s what you’re looking for.

Even when he was a wide receivers coach, Coach Swinney has done an excellent job of keeping his files and notes. He literally – and this is unbelievable to me – has the notebooks in his house from the notes he took as a wide receiver at Alabama. It’s one thing for a coach to take notes and everybody moves on and goes to the next year. But that’s how detail-oriented he is. He goes back and checks his notes from previous bowl games. He’ll go back and look at what we did getting ready for LSU in 2012, and he’ll go back afterward and take notes after the game. He’ll write about what he liked preparing, what he might have done differently, and he’ll bring those notes back out when it’s time.

As assistant coaches, we appreciate how efficient and organized he is. In August, we get a calendar for the entire year that is as detailed as it can possibly be. So we know when we have time off. We know when we’re having certain events. Just talking to other coaches in the profession, they don’t know what they’re doing next week. And it’s the same thing for the players: When they know what they’re going to be doing through the year, they can make plans to go home or buy a plane ticket during certain periods. They know exactly what their schedule looks like. What this planning does is tell the players and coaches he’s not going to hold them to a higher standard than he holds himself.

Coach Swinney is obviously a people person, and his ability to remember names is remarkable. We’ll be in the recruiting process, and he’ll know some of these high school coaches where we haven’t recruited their school in 10 or 15 years. A great example is Tee Higgins. Coach Swinney signed two players from Oak Ridge when the head coach, Joe Gaddis, was there. So we go up to Oak Ridge for the first time, and Clemson hadn’t been there in a long time. Here he is, one of the top players in Tennessee, right down the road from Knoxville. Immediately you walk in, and the head coach has a great memory of Coach Swinney when he was recruiting his players to Alabama. It wasn’t like you were starting over.

When Coach Swinney made me receivers coach in 2008, what helped me was the five years I was not here after I graduated in 2003. I had just missed Coach Swinney when he joined Tommy Bowden’s staff, because he got here in the spring of 2003. I went on to coaching high school ball for four years and one year at Presbyterian, but I was coming back every summer and working Clemson’s football camp. I was working directly with him, with the receivers. Football camp was his baby. He organized it. He was the director of it, did a great job of building it into a really unbelievable camp. He was able to watch me work coaching the wide receivers, and every year he would give me more and more responsibility.

So I come here in January of 2008 as a graduate assistant on the defensive side under Vic Koenning. We go through spring practice and get to summer. That’s when Coach Swinney made me assistant camp director. And I’ll never forget a phone call from him, after those camps were over in late June. He’s still the wideout coach, and we’re getting ready to go into the season. I’m at home trying to catch my breath one night, and he calls me and says: “I just want to tell you I appreciate you. You did an excellent job. And when I become a head coach one day, you’re going to be one of the first guys I hire. That may be four or five years from now, but I’m going to hire you.” I remember hanging up the phone and telling my wife: “You never know. He’s a good, young, up-and-coming coach. Maybe in four or five years he’ll be a head coach.” And then a few months later, he’s the head coach at Clemson. Amazing.

Everything that has happened since has been amazing, and it speaks to how special Coach Swinney is. How many people in that position would be where he is eight years later? His vision has been such a key part of it, and his ability to communicate and get players and coaches to buy into it. The consistency of his vision, and how closely he watches and makes sure that it’s going how he wants it, is extraordinary.

As coaches in the profession, you have a lot of buddies and friends who are at a lot of great schools. After the stories we hear from them, we always come back to our place and say, “Man, how lucky are we to be at Clemson and to have a coach like Coach Swinney?” He has an unbelievable ability to work hard and to be very efficient at what we’re doing, but at the same time be able to take some of those breaks and not feel bad to take a weekend in the spring, or the kids’ spring break. You come back and you’re refreshed.

A lot of my coaching buddies, they grind and they think that’s the only way you can do it. I look back at the last two years (2015 and 2016) and we played 30 games over two years. The players are going to take the lead from the coaches. And if we’re worn out from the grind and all that, it’s going to carry over from our attitudes to the players. So he’s got a great ability to know when to push those buttons. We know that right after National Signing Day we’re going to have five days to go skiing or just get away, go to the beach and relax. And then when we get back it’s time to go to work.

For the players and the coaches, when you know your schedule it allows you to be able to perform at your best. When you don’t know what you’re doing tomorrow or next week or next month, there’s a lot of looking around. There’s a plan in place. We’re not just going from the hip. He’s been very consistent with the schedule, and with his message. That overall consistency is key.

Tigerillustrated.com thanks Scott for sharing his time and insight.

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