The advantage Dabo believes Texas A&M has against Clemson
On paper, Clemson has a clear advantage heading into its matchup at Texas A&M this weekend.
Dabo Swinney has built Clemson’s program into a national power filled with all-conference players, while Jimbo Fisher is working to rebuild an A&M program that has reached 10 wins only once in the past 19 seasons.
The second-ranked Tigers are double-digit favorites against the unranked Aggies, and most prognosticators expect Clemson to earn a road victory in a hostile environment on its way to reaching the College Football Playoff for the fourth consecutive season.
But Swinney warns that there is one area in particular where Fisher and the Aggies have an edge heading into Saturday’s game.
“Unfortunately, I think the unknown is a competitive advantage for them,” Swinney said during his news conference Tuesday. “Hopefully, our experience can be a competitive advantage for us. But this is a difficult game to prepare for for us, for sure, because I’m watching Notre Dame and Florida State and Wake Forest and all these different schools, but yet you don’t have much to watch the actual people. We don’t have a lot of video evidence against these guys. It truly is like another opener all over again.”
The most challenging aspect for Clemson is that the Tigers are not sure how Texas A&M will use its personnel under the schemes of Fisher and defensive coordinator Mike Elko.
Elko was the defensive coordinator at Wake Forest from 2014-16 before spending last season at Notre Dame. He then came to Texas A&M when Fisher was hired following the 2017 season.
“Their d-coordinator came from Notre Dame. He was a guy that was at Wake Forest, and I was really, really happy when he left and went to Notre Dame because he was one of the best that we saw year in and year out,” Swinney said. “He does a great job schematically, especially coaching those guys up in the secondary. They do as good a job as anyone at route reading and diagnosing the play, reading the quarterback and just really being disciplined on their keys. I’m very impressed schematically with what they do.”
Swinney and Clemson’s offensive staff have watched tape of Elko’s defenses from Wake Forest, Notre Dame and last week when the Aggies opened the season against Northwestern State.
“Studying all the Notre Dame stuff, kind of some of the things where they’ve evolved, and then obviously just the one game to go on this year,” Swinney said. “But it should be a challenge to kind of figure out just what their plan is going to be and then making the right adjustments to give our guys a chance to be successful.”
Clemson’s defensive staff and Swinney are familiar with what Fisher likes to do from his time with the Seminoles. But they have only one game to go off of as far as how Fisher plans to fit his scheme with Texas A&M’s personnel.
That one game was an easy blowout victory where the Aggies did not have to show much.
“They’ve recruited extremely well. The skill, offensive line, quarterback, running back, receivers, at tight end, it sounds like they’ve really found a great one there,” defensive coordinator Brent Venables said. “(Fisher) knows how to utilize the personnel and put them in successful situations in both scheme and situationally. So he’s just getting them all moving in the right direction.”
While Venables likes that he is familiar with Fisher’s scheme, he acknowledged that Fisher knows what Clemson likes to do as well.
“You still have to go out and play well and execute, and it really matters what your players know,” Venables said. “But there’s some familiarity on both sides. So it can be negated, I guess, to a certain degree. But I’d rather have a little bit of background than not for sure.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2018 at 5:47 PM with the headline "The advantage Dabo believes Texas A&M has against Clemson."