CLEMSON — Changing positions in the middle of your collegiate career is never easy, and that is the challenge Markus Dixon is currently facing.

After being recruited as a tight end and spending his first two seasons playing that position, Dixon made the move to defensive end ahead of spring practice. Fortunately, the concept isn’t all that foreign, seeing as Dixon did play some end at the high school level.

However, there is a lot more that goes into playing end at the collegiate level, and Chris Rumph immediately put Dixon’s feet to the fire after he made the switch.

“I just dropped him in the grease right from the beginning,” the Tigers’ defensive ends coach said during Clemson’s annual media outing. “Because I wanted to know if he just wanted to be there to say he played defensive end or if he wanted to play defensive end. I did everything I could to make him change positions. I just drug him really, really bad to make sure that is what he wanted to do.”

And once fall camp begins, Rumph plans to amp up the learning process.

“I told him that if he could put up with my craziness, then he’ll be a pretty good football player,” he said. “So far, he is putting up with my craziness. But he hasn’t seen all of it yet. He is going to get another little dose.”

ESPN ranked Dixon No. 12 among all TE/H-Backs in the 2023 recruiting class. After redshirting his first season, he appeared in 10 games last season, but logged just 29 snaps, so he is still largely inexperienced, regardless of position.

The staff fully believes they have found the right spot for Dixon, and now is when the transformation process begins.

“I think he is in the right position, first of all,” Rumph said. “I think he is a guy that cares. He loves Clemson, loves his teammates. Plays with toughness. He does have some physical attributes and it is up to myself and the rest of the guys to pull that out of him. Because you see it every once in a while, the spark. Now it is up to us to get that light switch on all the time.”