Dabo Swinney\u2019s team will take on the New England Patriots in a two-week span this season. At least, that\u2019s what it feels like for Clemson\u2019s head coach.<\/p>\n
During the\u00a0ACC\u00a0Huddle\u00a0Special\u00a0with Swinney and Bill Belichick that recently debuted on ACC Network, Swinney noted that Clemson will travel to play Belichick\u2019s North Carolina team on Oct. 4 in Chapel Hill, N.C., before going on the road again the following week to face Bill O\u2019Brien\u2019s Boston College squad on Oct. 11 in Chestnut Hill, Mass.<\/p>\n
Of course, Belichick is entering his first season as UNC\u2019s head coach after winning six Super Bowl championships during his 24-season tenure as the Patriots\u2019 head coach from 2000-23.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien, meanwhile, spent six total years on Belichick\u2019s Patriots staff (2007-2011, 2023). He was hired by Belichick as an offensive assistant in 2007, then worked his way up to receivers coach, quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe play the New England Patriots this year,\u201d Swinney said during the ACC Network special with Belichick.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe go to North Carolina, and then we go to Boston College to play Bill O\u2019Brien. So, I feel like I\u2019m playing the whole Patriots organization in about a two-week span there.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the time comes, Swinney says he has his \u201csecret sauce\u201d to take down Belichick\u2019s Tar Heels.<\/p>\n
As Swinney put it, the Tigers \u201cwent and got our own Patriot\u201d last offseason, when Clemson hired Ryan Allen, a former NFL punter and three-time Super Bowl champion with the Patriots.<\/p>\n
This year marks Allen\u2019s second season serving in a special teams player development and specialists coach role for the Tigers. He was hired ahead of the 2024 season, after the NCAA rule change that was approved last June, allowing all football staff members to provide on-field coaching instruction during practice and games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went and got our own Patriot,\u201d Swinney said. \u201cI think he\u2019s got three Super Bowl championships \u2013 Ryan Allen, who was a punter for (Belichick). He\u2019s our specialist coach and my secret sauce to finding a way to beat the Patriots in October whenever we play them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey changed the rule in allowing everybody to coach. We brought him in last year. So, we\u2019re going to lean on him heavy to figure out how to defeat y\u2019all\u2019s punt block team or whatever else,\u201d Swinney added to Belichick.<\/p>\n
An eight-year NFL veteran, Allen appeared in 107 career regular season games with the Patriots (2013-18), Atlanta Falcons (2019), Indianapolis Colts (2020) and Tennessee Titans (2020). He helped the Patriots to Super Bowl titles in Super Bowls XLIX, LI and LIII, garnering selections to the Patriots\u2019 All-Dynasty Team and All-Decade Team for the 2010s as selected by the Patriots Hall of Fame committee.<\/p>\n
You can hear more of Swinney\u2019s conversation with Belichick about various topics in the following video:<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dabo Swinney\u2019s team will take on the New England Patriots in a two-week span this season. At least,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[5320,7,5324,5322,1167,249,2326,2094,6,5321,208,5323,5325],"class_list":{"0":"post-94631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-clemson-insider-podcast","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-gymnastics","11":"tag-hero","12":"tag-new-england","13":"tag-new-england-patriots","14":"tag-newengland","15":"tag-newenglandpatriots","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-noonan","18":"tag-patriots","19":"tag-track-and-field","20":"tag-wednesday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114605614965328522","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94631","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=94631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}