Clemson Football: Dabo Swinney’s recruiting demise was overstated

Clemson football has picked up a slew of 2023 commitments and is trending with double-digit recruits, showing the demise of Dabo Swinney’s recruiting was overstated. 

Don’t count out Dabo Swinney.

That’s something I’ve been saying since last season when the Tigers struggled at the start of the season and people like Paul Finebaum said the Clemson football was done as a college football power. That was premature.

Clemson football rallied and posted a 10-3 record last season and wasn’t that far off from playing for another ACC championship…in a down year.

The Tigers shouldn’t be down in 2022. Their defense should be one of the best in college football and with what’s expected to be a dominant running game too, and hopefully some better QB play, the Tigers are a legit contender to recapture the ACC crown and reach the playoff.

But when Clemson lost both of its coordinators last year and the recruiting class fell outside the top 10, people wondered if the recruiting would fall off more in the future?

So far, that hasn’t happened and right now, the Tigers have as much momentum as any college football team on the recruiting trail and it all stems from a huge (30 players) official visit weekend.

Dabo Swinney’s new way is paying off

The Tigers had never hosted recruits for official visits in the summer. Only unofficial visits. The difference is that if it’s an unofficial visit, the recruit has to pay, whereas an official visit is paid for by the team and is also longer.

Clemson football used to reserve its official visits for the fall but Dabo made the change and it paid off in a big way as four recruits have committed just this week to the Tigers with three of the four being ranked as four-stars in the On3 consensus rankings.

The Tigers have surged into the top-10 of the 2023 team rankings (ranking 8th via On3) but they are also trending hard for a number of other prospects and have picked up new projections for five new four-star recruits just in the past few days.

4-star wide receiver Noble Johnson, 4-star LB Dee Crayton, 4-star and top 50 DL Vic Burley, 4-star LB Jamal Anderson, and 4-star DL Stephiylan Green have all received multiple crystal ball projections to land with Clemson football just this week.

In addition to four verbal commitments this week, Clemson football has also gotten crystal ball projections for Robert Billings (3-star S), Zechariah Owen (4-star OT), Ahmad Brown (3-star S), AJ Hoffler (3-star DL), and Markus Dixon (3-star TE) all in the 2023 class.

That’s all since last weekend.

So to keep track, Clemson football is trending with expert picks for 10 2023 recruits and just landed four commitments. That’s 14 recruits committed or trending that way after one visit weekend, which is simply extraordinary.

And again, it shows that the demise of Dabo Swinney and Clemson on the recruiting trail was greatly overstated.