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CLEMSON -- Dabo Swinney hesitated to even say it, for good reason.
He's been burned a bit in the past by lavishing praise upon Joseph Ngata.
Including three years ago before Ngata had played a college snap.
"I saw pretty quickly in the spring that this guy, this guy is wired unlike your typical freshman -- mentally and physically," Swinney said then.
"He's got a bright, bright future. Bright, bright future. The great ones, it don't take long. It don't take long to see it when they're ready and ahead of the curve."
This was in August of 2019, which seems like 10 years ago. Clemson was coming off 44-16, and it didn't seem at all crazy to think Clemson was headed for a couple more national titles and a 45-0 record before Trevor Lawrence left for the NFL.
Back then if you said NIL, most folks would think you were talking about NLI (National Letter of Intent). If you said portal, most folks would look around for a Porta-John.
And we haven't even gotten into a pandemic, something else that was on the mind of no one way back when Swinney attracted attention by showering Ngata with praise.
Look: The negativity surrounding Swinney's general hyping of players is probably excessive and unfair. Just last night his rave reviews of tackle Tristan Leigh drew some cynical snickers from folks who aren't interested in accounting for the many times he's nailed an evaluation (the current Raiders receiver who's crashing in Swinney's basement this week would be a great example).
That said, he hasn't nailed them all. And Ngata, to this point, would probably be the most obvious example of the juice not matching the Swinney squeeze.
That's why he hesitated last night to rave about Ngata ... before raving about Ngata.
Back in August of 2019, the addition of another just-add-water superstar receiver seemed almost too good to be true. Clemson was coming off a playoff owned by Lawrence, Justyn Ross and Tee Higgins, and now the Tigers were adding another one?
