When Clemson wrapped up practice this past Wednesday at Death Valley, head coach Dabo Swinney spoke to the team for nearly 30 minutes.

Afterwards, Swinney made the offense run, similar to what he did to the defense the week before following a bad performance in a scrimmage. No one but Swinney, his coaches and players know what was said in the huddle that afternoon in the empty stadium, but based on what the coach said about his team to the media later that evening, it is obvious Swinney is not getting what he wants out of his team this spring.

“We are just not a great team, but we don’t have to be a great team in April,” he said. “We need to be a great-team come September. We are a football team right now that has a long way to go and a lot of work.”

Swinney was coaching his team hard that afternoon, something he says he supposed to do. If the players did not need coaching, he said he would just roll them out there and let them play.

“That is how the spring is just trying to get the cohesiveness of the team together,” Clemson wide receiver Hunter Renfrow said. “We kind of talked about what a team is supposed to look like and how we are not a team yet.

“Hopefully, the leadership can come through this summer and the rest of spring and we will be able to put some wins together next season.”

The “ingredients” as Swinney called them are there. The Tigers return nine starters on defense, eight on offense, their kicker, punter and long snapper. The 2018 football schedule is very favorable, too, with no back-to-back road games all season and an open date in the middle of the season.

In other words, Clemson is set for another run at the College Football Playoff and an ACC Championship. The question is how hungry is it?

“Ya’ll have heard me say many times, we are kind of finishing our get-ready phase. This is the first leg of our journey,” Swinney said. “It is a four-quarter journey. So we take what we do this spring and we try to give these guys all the tools they need to get better this summer and equip them with information, criticism, encouragement, you name it, and back it up.

“We evaluate everything you can evaluate through our practices. Then it is kind of on them to go through that transformation phase this summer. It is always interesting to see the improvement of some guys.”

It will be interesting to see how the Tigers’ new leadership will lead them through the summer and have the team as a whole prepared for bigger and better things in the fall.

“I don’t think we were a great team this time last year. Far from it,” Swinney said. “We are a long ways away. But we have the ingredients. There is no doubt about that, but they don’t put themselves together. You have to kind of put it together, mix it up, get the oven just right … So we are just kind of not where we needed to be … our consistency really across the board.

“We have too many guys making mental errors. We have too many guys doing stupid things like bad snaps … I’m talking about the whole team. I’m talking about hundred or something guys. It would be easy for me to throw our top 22 out there and we would look pretty good. But they are all ours and they all matter.”

Clemson will return to practice today. The Tigers have just four practices left, including the annual Orange and White Spring Game on April 14 at Death Valley.