Garrett Riley is approaching his first season as offensive coordinator for the Clemson Tigers, and many are curious about what the offense will look like with him at the helm. From how the Tigers will approach their attack to the personnel, there’s many questions that won’t be answered until the season opener at Duke.

Looking specifically at the personnel though, head coach Dabo Swinney gave a little bit of transparency about the offense. Don’t take it too literal though because everything can be smoke and mirrors as the season looms.

Clemson is known for staying in a base offense of 11-personnel and working the scheme around that. What that means is one running back, one tight end. The first number is identifying the number of running backs on the field while the second is noting tight ends. Swinney says this setup is still the starting point for the Tigers even in the changes.

“We’re always gonna base out of 11-personnel, that’s who we are, that’s what we built around here for a long time. There’s been years if you go back to 2018, we ran a lot of 10-personnel and our personnel dictated that,” Swinney said. “If you go back to ’21, we were a lot of 40-personnel, what we call 40-personnel because that’s just where we were. We’re trying to find a way to win the game.”

In between the lines of this quote, it’s clear that the base only means so much depending on the talent you have at different positions. For example, Clemson has two really strong running backs with Will Shipley and Phil Mafah, so we may see a lot of 20 or 21-personnel.

It’s all speculation at this point and the bits and pieces we get to see in tempo practice don’t paint the whole picture. Swinney does say the offense is flexible and it’s dependent on what they’ll need to do to win the game. It’s something we’ll keep an eye on in practice, but the trip to see the Blue Devils will give us our first true understanding of this offense.

“You’ve got to play the hand that you got, so I think we’ve always done that,” Swinney said. “But with this football team for sure, no question we’ll be a bse 11-personnel…we’ll be a multiple personnel team and when we’ve been at our best, we’ve been able to do that.”

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