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Schoffel: It's the most obvious lesson of all ... Coaching matters

"Coaching matters."

It was a comment Dabo Swinney made several times during his press conference before Clemson took on Louisville earlier this season, and it has stuck with me ever since.

Why was I watching a random Dabo Swinney press conference in the days leading up to a Clemson-Louisville game that I certainly wasn't going to watch? Well, it's because I was really impressed by listening to him and his coordinators speak during interviews one week earlier, when they were preparing to take on Florida State. And I was kind of interested in hearing what he said about another opponent.

It was revealing.

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Defensive coordinator Adam Fuller followed Mike Norvell from Memphis to Florida State.
Defensive coordinator Adam Fuller followed Mike Norvell from Memphis to Florida State. (Gene Williams/Warchant)

In the days leading up to their game against Florida State, Swinney and his coordinators spoke mostly about the Seminoles' talent. How fast and athletic their players were on defense. How the Tigers knew they would get FSU's best effort and that it was a dangerous opponent -- because of that talent.

The talking points were a little different the following week before Clemson faced Louisville.

One year earlier, Clemson had obliterated Louisville, 77-16. So the point Swinney kept making before this year's game was that he expected a completely different Cardinals squad. He explained that by the time Clemson played Louisville in 2018, Bobby Petrino was already a dead man walking. The kids had quit on him, and he seemed to have quit on them. Clemson rushed for almost 500 yards in that game -- on only 37 carries. The Tigers averaged over 13 yards per carry.

So, yeah, Swinney figured Louisville might look a little different this time around.

"Coaching matters. No question about that ...," he said in the days leading up to that game. "They just were a team in disarray last year. They were a team that, for whatever reason, just wasn't playing hard. But let me tell you, it's a different deal now. ... So they’ve come in, again, coaching matters, and this group has come in and you can tell that these kids believe in what they’re trying to do, and they really connected with the team and are doing the things you need to do in terms of developing leadership."

Sure enough, Swinney was right. While it ended up being a lopsided final score, Clemson was only leading the Cardinals, 17-3, late in the third quarter. It was a completely different game in every aspect.

Louisville would go on to finish the season with a 7-5 regular-season record and a 5-3 mark in the ACC. One year after going 2-10 and 0-8 in Petrino's final year. Scott Satterfield was named ACC Coach of the Year.

Coaching matters.

I've been thinking about that statement a lot in recent weeks, as we've watched Mike Norvell put his first Florida State coaching staff together and we've gotten the opportunities to meet almost all of these coaches in person.

And while I know that many in the Florida State fan base are determined to take a wait-and-see approach with this coaching staff after getting "burned" by the previous one -- and I get that mindset -- I also feel very confident in saying that you're going to jump on board with this crew at some point, whether it's sooner or later.

Probably sooner.

This Florida State coaching staff is different than the last one in so many ways. Not only are there several higher-quality assistants on staff, but the synergy between the assistants and the head coach will be infinitely better. And the importance of that fact cannot be overstated. It's actually something that has been a problem at Florida State for many years -- going back to the last half of Jimbo Fisher's tenure.

It's not a secret that Fisher was hard on his assistant coaches, and that's fine. Plenty of great coaches are difficult to work for. The bigger problem, in my mind, was that he clearly didn't respect many of them as peers, and they knew it. So they were often unwilling to give him suggestions or feedback, which meant the direction of the entire football program had to be powered by his brain -- and his brain only.

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