CLEMSON — It has been a busy week inside the football offices at the Allen Reeves Football Complex in Clemson.

Head coach Dabo Swinney has met with his team and coaches this week, as well as had individual meetings with his players. There have been a lot of moving parts, and The Clemson Insider has done its best through sourcing to provide you the most up to date information we can.

Here is the latest information we have regarding any news involving Swinney’s coaching staff.

As TCI reported earlier this week, you can expect more Clemson coaches to follow John Grass to Samford. We confirmed on Thursday that assistant coach Mickey Conn will join Grass in Birmingham and we continue to hear others may as well.

Speaking of earlier reports, on Wednesday we reported Swinney is doing his due diligence to find a new offensive coordinator, as Garrett Riley will not return for the 2026 season, though it has not been officially announced, and it may not if Riley leaves on his own and takes another job.

In any business or organization, it is a common practice, if a major change is being considered, that those in charge start getting a list of candidates together even if they have not made a change at that time. This is also done to gage if there would be any interest from the people they might want to talk to.

In the Wednesday report, we told you Clemson had expressed interest in a current ACC offensive coordinator. We can tell you with certainty, because we had really good sourcing, that former Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner was the coach Clemson was interested in.

As we said in the report, the timing was going to be critical for the Tigers because there was an SEC school who was also interested in him, and he was their top target. As you now know, Faulkner was hired as Florida’s new offensive coordinator on Thursday.

It is no surprise Swinney is speaking to coaching candidates because this is an important time of the year for coaches because of the new calendar. With the transfer portal window set to open on Jan. 2 and will run through Jan. 16, lots of players will go into the portal knowing where they are headed before it even opens, so things will move quickly for many once the portal opens. There is only one portal window now so the roster needs need to be filled in January.

With that said, it will be imperative for coaching staffs to be set so they can attack the portal when it opens. In the past, Swinney has waited until after the bowl season to make changes to his coaching staff. However, Clemson is a candidate to land in the Sun Bowl, which will be played on Dec. 31. If Swinney waits until then to start making changes and looking for new coaches it would not benefit him or the program.

Swinney wouldn’t be doing his job if he wasn’t doing his due diligence to be in position to have his staff in place when the portal window opens.