Back-to-back top-10 recruiting classes put bite into Dabo Swinney's vision

It’s just another step.

A long stride for sure. Top-10 recruiting classes don’t grow on trees, and Clemson – for the first time since the end of the Danny Ford era – has back-to-back top-10 classes in hand (according to ESPN’s ratings).

Dabo Swinney is building his program, year upon year. And there is ample evidence to support the notion that progress is being made, simultaneously on three important fronts: talent acquisition, on-field performance, and administrative and staff-related support.

The fourth leg of any consistently successful program is player development. And with more than 60 of Clemson’s 85 scholarship players wearing the tag ‘freshman’ or ‘sophomore’ beside their names on the roster next fall, the coaching staff will have a chance to show its stuff.

For Sammy Watkins, another season just like the one he had will be more than sufficient. The same might be said for DeAndre Hopkins and Dalton Freeman and Chandler Catanzaro.

For the rest of the Tigers – both first and second-tier players – improvement is the order of the day as the team moves into its off-season conditioning program and then, a little more than a month from now, into spring practice.

Growing players up into more substantial roles and a higher level of performance and consistency is what the fourth leg of Swinney’s program is all about, and that leg is intricately interwoven with recruiting.

Down the road a year or two, Swinney envisions a team dominated by its redshirt sophomore, junior and senior classes – a team where only a rare talent like Sammy Watkins is expected, or needed, to step onto the field and perform from the get-go at the highest level.

Last November, during the Tigers’ open-date week, Swinney met with reporters after an ordinary practice and delivered perhaps the most compelling description yet of how he envisions the fine art of program-building.

In the aftermath of signing day, it’s worth taking a look back at some of what he had to say.

On sustaining recruiting at a high level:

“There’s a perception out there that we’ve always recruited these great classes,” Swinney said, “and I really don’t know where that comes from…We’ve had a good class here and there, and we’ve signed a great player here and there. But we’ve never, not really since the 1980s, put classes back-to-back-to-back in recruiting. That’s what we’re trying to do…

”Last year’s class was great, and the 2012 class has a chance to be great. And I think our ’13 class has a chance to be as good as we’ve signed…That’s where we are as a program, and that’s where we want to be.”

On evaluating talent and executing a recruiting blueprint for 2013:

“We’ve got to get our plan together as far as our evaluations, and the things we’ve got to get done to make early offers and good decisions on who those guys are…Right now, if you just look at the numbers, we’re not looking at a very big class. That’s why it’s important that we sign the right guys…

“Putting classes back-to-back-to-back is how you really do it.”

On developing players from a deep and talented pool of personnel:

“Right now we have a bunch of young guys that we have to coach up. There’s always some growing pains that comes with that…I think we’ll (soon) be in the position to develop guys the right way, and not have to play ‘em before they’re ready.

“I think we’ll become a very junior/senior-laden football team, and the freshmen and sophomores will be the rare guys here and there. You’ll always have a great player who’ll show up and change you in a spot here or there…But for the most part, they’ll be developing.

“In all the great programs out there, that’s the way it is…You want to be able to build your team from veteran players – guys who’ve been in your system. If you recruit the right guys and develop them in the right way, then you have a chance to sustain some consistency, program-wise.”

That’s the goal. And at this point, it’s hard to argue with the intermediate results.