CLEMSON \u2014 Changing positions in the middle of your collegiate career is never easy, and that is the challenge Markus Dixon is currently facing.<\/p>\n
After being recruited as a tight end and spending his first two seasons playing that position, Dixon made the move to defensive end ahead of spring practice. Fortunately, the concept isn\u2019t all that foreign, seeing as Dixon did play some end at the high school level. <\/p>\n
However, there is a lot more that goes into playing end at the collegiate level, and Chris Rumph immediately put Dixon\u2019s feet to the fire after he made the switch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just dropped him in the grease right from the beginning,\u201d the Tigers\u2019 defensive ends coach said during Clemson\u2019s annual media outing. \u201cBecause I wanted to know if he just wanted to be there to say he played defensive end or if he wanted to play defensive end. I did everything I could to make him change positions. I just drug him really, really bad to make sure that is what he wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
And once fall camp begins, Rumph plans to amp up the learning process. <\/p>\n
\u201cI told him that if he could put up with my craziness, then he\u2019ll be a pretty good football player,\u201d he said. \u201cSo far, he is putting up with my craziness. But he hasn\u2019t seen all of it yet. He is going to get another little dose.\u201d<\/p>\n
ESPN ranked Dixon No. 12 among all TE\/H-Backs in the 2023 recruiting class. After redshirting his first season, he appeared in 10 games last season, but logged just 29 snaps, so he is still largely inexperienced, regardless of position. <\/p>\n
The staff fully believes they have found the right spot for Dixon, and now is when the transformation process begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he is in the right position, first of all,\u201d Rumph said. \u201cI think he is a guy that cares. He loves Clemson, loves his teammates. Plays with toughness. He does have some physical attributes and it is up to myself and the rest of the guys to pull that out of him. Because you see it every once in a while, the spark. Now it is up to us to get that light switch on all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEMSON \u2014 Changing positions in the middle of your collegiate career is never easy, and that is the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[5320,7,5324,5322,5321,5323,5325],"class_list":{"0":"post-221549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-clemson-insider-podcast","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-gymnastics","11":"tag-hero","12":"tag-noonan","13":"tag-track-and-field","14":"tag-wednesday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}