CLEMSON, S.C. — In this day and age, when so many people talk and news can travel fast, Dabo Swinney admitted he has few people he can trust.

However, one of those people Clemson’s head football coach does trust is Southern Cal head coach Lincoln Riley. He knew he could tell Riley he was thinking about making a change at offensive coordinator and he wanted to know if Riley could tell him about some of the coaches he was interested in possibly bringing on his Clemson staff.

Swinney had three or four names he was considering, and he knew Riley would shoot him straight. One of the names on his list was Riley’s younger brother, Garrett.

“I really wasn’t even convinced I was going to make a change,” Swinney said Wednesday during Garrett Riley’s official introductory press conference as Clemson’s new offensive coordinator.

However, that changed after talking with Lincoln.

Swinney gave Lincoln the names he was considering, and they went on from there. Of course, he did not go too far down the list.

Garrett Riley had interest and Swinney admitted he did not talk with anyone else after he decided to make a change at offensive coordinator.

“This was something that kind of happened in short order, and the best part about it, no one knew about it until they needed to know about it,” Swinney said.

Garrett Riley said he did not have a ton of background or a whole lot of knowledge about Clemson and how Swinney runs his program.

“I tried to investigate as much as I could from people that I know who know Coach (Swinney) better than I do,” Riley said. “That was important as all of this unfolded. I just tried to gauge that a little bit. But it has been awesome since we started.

“We hit the ground running.”

Riley said he started recruiting and traveling with the rest of the coaching staff. It gave him the opportunity to get to know them and Swinney. As recruiting slows down, and the staff can start to focus on spring practice, Riley is starting to get an idea of what his personnel is and what he can bring to the offense.

“I am not a coach that is going to say, ‘we are going to run this’ just because I love it,” Riley said. “We are going to figure out what our guys can do and what we feel like can make this offense awesome.”

There are a couple of things Riley says the offense will do.

“We are going to be violent and fast,” he said. “Whether it is the running game or the passing game, we will attack.”

Clemson will start to attack on March 6 when it begins spring practice.

—Ken Ruinard-staff / USA TODAY Sports

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