Dabo Swinney breezed through the chapters of the failing coach playbook.
He changed offensive coordinators. He lashed out at the media. He changed quarterbacks.
These are telltale signs of a coach at his wit’s end. They’re also window dressings. A rearrangement of deck chairs, while S.S. Clemson slips into the sea.
Swinney’s coordinator change unsurprisingly didn’t help. Chad Morris was last effective more than a decade ago. His offense mustered 22 points last week against Georgia Southern, a middling Sun Belt team.
Dabo’s petulant outbursts at the press corps won’t fix anything. Ask Brian Kelly, whose own blowup in a news conference last September after the Florida game spoke
to a coach at his breaking point.
Clemson's quarterback change might help, a bit. Mediocre to flat-out bad quarterback play has been a linchpin of Clemson’s tailspin throughout the past several seasons.
If freshman Tait Reynolds shows promise, that’ll allow Swinney to sell a future that’s brighter than it looked in Week 1. Reynolds can’t fare worse against North Carolina this weekend than Christopher Vizzina did against LSU.
And, still, it’s impossible to ignore Swinney’s progression from dynasty builder to archetype of a failing coach, while proceeding toward the epilogue of the failing coach playbook.
What’s the epilogue? Try this: A loss to another floundering coach.
Insert Bill Belichick.
A loss to Bill Belichick would be new low for Dabo Swinney
If Dabo loses to Belichick, we’ll be asking for the second time in three weeks: Can Clemson find a suitable offramp with a once-fantastic, but now failing, coach protected by a $57 million buyout?
Beli’s record says he’s 2-0 this season. Well, fire the confetti gun.
That’s better than a 41-point loss in the season opener, like Clemson endured.
UNC’s offense looks wobbly enough for the 2-0 start to be a mirage. Its defense looks solid enough for bowl game potential.
The ACC will be no cakewalk for North Carolina. Turns out, the conference is more than just Miami and 16 bystanders. The ACC went 3-0 against the Big Ten last weekend, while Beli’s Heels were walloping East Tennessee State.
If Belichick wins two out of his next three against Clemson, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh, we might need to remove some of the dirt we shoveled onto his college coaching career after last season.
“It's an honor to coach against him, really," Swinney said. "Sometimes I still can't believe he's the coach at North Carolina.”
He’s coaching North Carolina, because the NFL decided it was done with Belichick. Even the greats must go to pasture, eventually. When will UNC recognize that?
Despite this 2-0 start, I wonder whether North Carolina is a handful of losses away from being fed up with the Beli bonanza.
Even as we wait for the Muse’s next mention of her “BANniversary,” UNC navigated an eyesore this month when general manager Michael Lombardi, a top Belichick lieutenant, resigned amid a university investigation into his conduct.
A tight-lipped Belichick acknowledged the internal investigation, which provides a precarious backdrop behind the team’s apparent on-field improvement.
This investigation gives off optics of an irreparable fracture forming between university and coach.
North Carolina's offramp from Belichick would be easier (and cheaper) than Clemson's with Swinney.
Dabo Swinney teased 11-1 for Clemson. That would quiet 'gotcha guys'
The boring truth of this UNC-Clemson game is it's probably little more than a pugil fight between two mediocre teams. An appetizer of empty calories, as we wait for LSU-Mississippi in prime time. Alternatively, it's a possible inflection point, where the winner finds semi-solid footing for a decent season, and the loser heads toward the ACC's pit.
For Swinney, a loss to Belichick would be just as unsettling as getting routed by Lane Kiffin. As much as Clemson underperformed last season, it still beat UNC by 28 points.
Clemson’s schedule, post-LSU, is as accommodating as Swinney could’ve hoped to have. His team's not great. The schedule is.
When a reporter questioned Swinney after the LSU skunking whether he regretted how he constructed his roster, Clemson's veteran coach came unglued and teased the possibility of an 11-game win streak.
Dabo Swinney chastises @chapelfowler for asking if he regretted anything about his approach to roster construction, calls him a “gotcha guy” for asking a totally fair question
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) September 8, 2026
He has lost the plot pic.twitter.com/Y3tUMTdcOq
“What if we go 11-1?” Swinney fired back at the reporter, whom he called “gotcha guy,” despite the reporter asking a reasonable question on plenty of minds.
If Dabo somehow delivers on 11-1, he can call us all “gotcha guys.”
It’d be one heck of an improbable comeback story for a coach who’s zipping through the maneuvers of the failing coach playbook, with the epilogue still to come.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Listen to his podcast, "College Football Unfiltered." Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bill Belichick gains chance to write epilogue to Dabo Swinney downfall at Clemson
