By Ed McGranahan.

Two weeks out, Tajh Boyd admitted he remained “a work in progress.”

His candor was refreshing, even if it’s a bit unsettling. Keep in mind, however, that seven or eight practices remain between now and Sept. 1, several sleepless nights and plenty of high anxiety.

So much hangs on Boyd’s ability to remain hinged in the face of adversity. Auburn most surely will challenge Clemson’s retooled offensive line and try to force Boyd to make a bonehead decision.

Boyd broke out that incandescent grin.

A confident, gifted passer and proud young man, he worked tirelessly to improve, to identify trouble quicker and discipline his reactions. He shed nearly 15 pounds by changing his eating habits and haunting the weight room. And he spent hours studying himself and how he functioned his first season in Chad Morris’ offense.

In the final scrimmage of preseason this morning, Boyd completed 13 of 22 passes for 218 yards and three touchdowns.

He also threw two interceptions.

Occasionally there might be a hiccup or a belch, but by and large Dabo Swinney liked what he saw this summer. Saturday, when Boyd tried to drop the ball to a receiver in a crease, the pass was too flat and it was picked. Swinney said he wasn’t critical of the decision to throw the pass but rather how it was thrown.

“You just can’t turn the ball over,” Boyd said. “Sometimes you have dumb errors.

“You can’t have things like that. I have to keep pushing myself, making the best decisions possible. We’ve done a lot, lot of good things.”

Boyd threw nine of his 12 interceptions last year in the final third of the season and was prone to take a sack rather than bail out or throw the ball away.

“I think he’s really worked hard on that. I think he’s bought into the fact that he has to make plays with his legs,” Swinney said. “It’s not going to be perfect always. I think he’s bought into the fact that he’s going to have to check the ball down, and to understand that you can’t take sacks in certain situations. He took 10 sacks last year by himself. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but his.

“We’ve got to see it on game day.”

Swinney and Boyd said they want to see the team practice as if every snap counted.

“I think he’s improved, but he’s also had some moments where he’s taken some chances that he shouldn’t take,” Swinney said. “Sometimes that comes from that practice mentality.”

Said Boyd: “I feel like in other practices and scrimmages guys have been treating it like its practice, but it’s not. Every time we step on that field, we need to push ourselves and challenge ourselves.”

Two critical junctures for Clemson’s coaches in the coming days are determining a depth chart for Auburn and deciding which players will be needed for the long haul.

Swinney said not having Sammy Watkins shouldn’t require any compromise in the game plan.

“We’re going to do what we do,” he said of the Auburn game. “All last week we pretty much were playing the guys the way we’re going to go into the game.

There are some rough edges that require further sanding.

“We’ve got two weeks to get dialed in,” he said. ”Like I told our team, this is their preseason game. This is all we can use to go on to make decisions. From that point it’s the real deal. Can you perform on game day?”

Nothing specifically concerned Swinney but he remained curious about how a team responds with sophomores and freshmen in critical roles.

“I don’t think we’re going to know that until we go play. How quickly we can bring those guys along to play at a high level,” he said. “We’ve got to come out of the gate roaring.”

By then, it needs to be a finished product not work in progress.