Entering spring practice, the thing Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was most eager to see is how the team’s 15 early enrollees would fare in their first taste of college football after arriving on campus in January, and how much the coaches could develop them, knowing the Tigers will need a number of them to be ready to play as true freshmen this season.
“That was probably the biggest thing,” Swinney said recently, “because I know there’s several of those guys that we were going to have to count on, and how far could we get those guys, where are they mentally … because you don’t ever know.