The kicking question

Maybe I missed it, but through several hours of listening to Dabo Swinney on Monday night at his home for an off-the-record dinner with the media, and then much of Tuesday at his annual media golf outing, I never heard anyone ask him about the kicking game.

Last year underscored the monstrous impact of a kicking game -- or a debilitating lack of one. I'm not going to ruin your morning by reciting the litany of missed kicks that should've been made, but no doubt Swinney has spent a long time wondering how much would've been different had he possessed a dependable kicker in 2010.

From November to January, it took Swinney a while to publicly acknowledge that last season was a failure. On the surface, it would seem that 6-7 is an automatic failure and it shouldn't take long to arrive at that conclusion. But you can sorta understand if Swinney felt the teeth-gnashing tug of What if? When you envision what could've happened had Clemson been able to ... just ... make ... a few ... kicks, it's not unreasonable to have hesitance to completely trash everything from 2010.

This is a bit different than "one play away." This is more numbing than an accumulation of a play here, a play there keeping you from achieving what you think you should achieve. This is reaching all the Par-5s in two and then four-putting. This is probably the worst way to lose.

(Then again, maybe the misses were ultimately a good thing because the losing season compelled Swinney to make changes and improve the program. If things shake out differently in Tallahassee and Clemson wins its second consecutive division title, does Swinney make changes and bring in Chad Morris' cutting-edge offense? Doubt it.)

You have to think this offense under Morris will be significantly better at cashing in on scoring opportunities. But you also have to think Clemson will be involved in the normal complement of close games, and that makes kicking as big of an issue as it was last year.

Chandler Catanzaro had a pretty good spring, and he spent some time during the offseason getting expert instruction. But we really won't know anything about his dependability (or lack thereof) until he actually does something (or doesn't do it) in a pressure situation. The kid was as automatic as can be last August, prompting Swinney to say he'd be "an All-American" if he carried his success from the practice field to the real thing.

Swinney maintains Catanzaro will be a good, dependable kicker before all is said and done. He rebounded well late last season. But freshman Ammon Lakip is viewed as an immediate contender, so this will be a prominent storyline for a while even if it's being completely overshadowed by all the other storylines right now.

LW