Coach Dabo Swinney figures he recruited these freshmen to Clemson, so he might as well play them in this critical season for his program.
Swinney and his assistants sent waves of first-year players into Saturday's win over Troy, even while the Tigers trailed in the second half. A total of 24 freshmen saw playing time, more than a third of the 70 players Clemson used. The coach said similar numbers are likely this weekend against Wofford.
"We have to rely on some freshman this year. But they are the right kind of guys. That's the good thing about it,"
Swinney said. "They're guys that fit our criteria and what we're looking for and we're excited about them. We have some guys that are beyond their years football-wise."
The team's leading receiver in the 43-19 win over Troy, Sammy Watkins, and second leading rusher, Mike Bellamy were freshmen. In all, freshmen gained 256 of Clemson's 468 yards of offense.
Newcomers were all over the defense too. Freshmen Stephone Anthony had the team's only sack and Robert Smith had the lone interception.
It wasn't the way defensive coordinator Kevin Steele wanted it, but he said playing freshmen early and often is necessary this year to get his best unit on the field
"We've got to manufacture experience in a quick, quick fashion,"
he said. "You can practice them all day long, you can scrimmage them all day long. But the only way to manufacture the experience in a short period of time for a long season is to put them out there."
The future of Swinney and his staff are largely in these young players' hands. Swinney brought Clemson to its first Atlantic Coast Conference title game in 2009, but followed it up with the Tigers first losing season in more than a decade last year.
Swinney sowed the seeds of this young team in his first offseason after taking over the program midway through 2008. He decided he wanted two solid back-to-back classes that could create sustained quality at Clemson, instead of the cycle of good and mediocre teams the Tigers have endured over the past 10 years.
"We knew this was coming just because of the way we recruited,"
Swinney said.
And the older players have for the most part accepted the competition for playing time. Center Dalton Freeman said the new players were too good from the start to stay on the bench.
"I'm so proud of those guys. We saw them come in over the summer and we realized how much potential they had then. We went into camp and they just exploded right off the bat,"
said Freeman, a junior. "We were just hoping they would settle down and be able to perform before 85,000 and they did."
