‘This one will leave a mark’ — Clemson’s season-opening flop against Georgia brings same old questions for Dabo Swinney

ATLANTA — There are plenty of people in college football who respect Dabo Swinney.

They believe in him. They laud his family-like program environment, the stability on his staff and the culture of his team. His players seem to genuinely love playing for him. He seems to love coaching them.

While some question his authenticity, there are just as many that defend him as a genuine good ol’ Southerner. If you meet him, nestled there in his purple-and-orange splashed office, he’s the same man you get on the podium in public — the country twang, the God-fearing messages, the little ol’ Clemson vibe, the thou-shall-not-steal aura.

So many in the sport think it honorable that he stands by his principles and trusts in his philosophy no matter what they do.

They dabble in the transfer portal. He does not.

They crow about NIL payments. He does not.

They are about transactional relationships. He is not.

On Saturday inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta, as the No. 1-ranked Georgia Bulldogs finished off a 34-3 clobbering of Dabo’s Clemson Tigers, as they wrapped up a second-half pummeling, as they asserted the dominance of an SEC power, many within the sport — even those defenders of the man himself — are probably left wondering about something.

Will we ever again see the Dabo’s Clemson of old?

You know, the one that Dabo built into a monster, the Goliath of the ACC that stood toe-to-toe with the likes of Ohio State and Alabama, the program that won two national championships with two different All-American quarterbacks, the once-lovable underdog and only real challenger, for at least a span of time, to the SEC’s evil empire-like rule over the sport.

Where is that Clemson? Where did it go? And will it return?

For a minute, let’s stop. This isn’t about one game. This isn’t an overreaction to a single performance. Few expected the Tigers, a 13-point underdog, to really beat arguably the country’s most dominant program over the last four years. Georgia, title winners in 2021 and 2022, will make and has made plenty of teams, even the good ones, look bad. In fact, at halftime Saturday, it was a reasonable contest: Georgia 6, Clemson 0.

But what unfurled in the second half — aside from Kirby Smart and new OC Mike Bobo unleashing their 5-star skill players — is a damning indictment on Dabo’s bunch. That never-give-up, relentless, four-quarter style disappeared.

And the coach himself knows it.

“Biggest thing is when you don’t finish. Gotta play four quarters,” he said in a post-game news conference. “When you get beat like that, that’s on the head coach. Complete ownership of an absolute crap second half. Sometimes you get your butt kicked and we did today.”

In the second half, Georgia scored touchdowns on four of five possessions, rolled up nearly 300 yards and had 13 first downs. Swinney used various descriptions to describe the bloodbath.

“They just kicked our tails.”

“We just got our butts kicked.”

“We took one right in the gut.”

“Got your ass kicked.”

“Flat-out butt kicking.”

And, finally, “This one will leave a mark. It’s going to be one I never forget.”

He apologized to the fans, who on Saturday probably felt déjà vu with an offense that mustered little more than a whimper.

Year 2 with offensive coordinator Garrett Riley and QB Cade Klubnik was supposed to be improved, revitalized. It was supposed to live up to all those lofty expectations. Instead, the unit didn’t crack 200 yards, started out with a bevy of dysfunctional snaps and limped to what is becoming a consistently dismal outing against Georgia.

Take for instance this: Clemson has not scored a touchdown on Georgia in 31 consecutive drives, dating back to the second quarter of their game in 2014. That stretch covers 10.5 quarters of football, two full games and 155 minutes of game time.

Saturday’s margin was especially historic. It was the biggest loss for Swinney in more than a decade, since a 37-point defeat to eventual national champion Florida State in 2013.

It’s another hiccup in four years’ worth of them. Clemson lost a 14th game Saturday in the last 54. Not terrible, no, and many programs around the country would accept such a record (40-14).

But consider this: Clemson had lost three games in the previous 76 (2014-2019).

Has everyone caught up and passed Clemson? And what if everyone has caught up and passed Clemson because of their coach’s archaic philosophy, one heralded by some as pure and right, but perhaps a detriment in this new transient and transactional world of college sports?

Aside from the military academies, Clemson is the only FBS school not to have accepted a transfer this cycle.

To that, Dabo shrugs.

“People say whatever they are going to say. Doesn’t matter what I say,” he said of the critics to his approach to the transfer portal. “We do what’s best for Clemson year in and year out. When you lose like this, they’ve got every right to say whatever they want and write whatever you want. It comes with it. Part of it.”

Dabo makes $11 million a year. And, based on the market, is rightfully paid. He’s one of just three active head coaches to have won a national title (the other is Mack Brown and the man across the sideline from him Saturday, Smart).

That’s an indictment, perhaps, on the current state of the game, an industry in transformation, a sport whose championship coaches have run from change (even Nick Saban acknowledged that). This sport is all together different today than it was just three years ago with the advent of NIL payments and it will be all together different in 10 months than it is today as athlete revenue sharing arrives.

Did Clemson lose Saturday because it has no transfers? Probably not. After all, the program has top-five talent if you believe composite team talent rankings from various sites. But you can’t hit on every high school player. While coaches shove many out the door and replace them with more groomed readymade transfers, Dabo sticks with his guys.

In a fitting scene Saturday, a few minutes into the third quarter, Georgia scored its first touchdown — an acrobatic catch on a fade pass in the corner of the end zone from Colbie Young.

He’s a transfer.