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CLEMSON -- They were teammates for three seasons, including the most momentous season in Clemson football history when one October day Tommy Bowden was out and Dabo Swinney was in.

Not a lot of selling was required to land Tyler Grisham, who had a years-long relationship with Swinney dating to Swinney's days at Alabama.

The salesmanship of a lifetime was required for Swinney to land C.J. Spiller when people on his own staff told him he was crazy for even considering the idea.

Spiller and Grisham were there for the beginning of the Swinney era as players.

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Now they're here as position coaches for the start of Dabo 2.0 as a significantly reconstituted staff tries to usher the Tigers back to the championship level.

While it's certainly been a fun story to follow two foundational pieces as they transition into coaching, it hasn't been easy for the them.

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Grisham has been in charge of receivers for two seasons after replacing Jeff Scott.

This time two years ago, Spiller was a volunteer assistant track coach at Liberty High School and not totally sure he wanted to get into coaching.

It's been an aggregate three-year firehose as both assistants have dealt with significant adversity.

Injuries have been the common theme at both positions: A sadistic run at Grisham's position that continued with this week's news of Adam Randall's torn ACL, and last year's banged-up running backs corps.

There are many hard parts of learning on the job, and one of them is finding the right way to manage personalities.

Grisham recently shared that one of his lessons from last year was honing the right balance of challenging his players while also loving them (there will be more of the former from him moving forward).

This week we asked Spiller to reflect on that side of coaching, though it should be pointed out that his top three running backs are very much a part of the leadership nucleus of this offense -- comfortable in their own skin, and low-maintenance from an ego standpoint.

Will Shipley, Kobe Pace and Phil Mafah just seem like the right kind of dudes. Not just as players, but between the ears.