FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Some of Dabo Swinney’s best memories, and worst, have come at Miami’s Sun Life Stadium. And though beating Ohio State in the 2014 Orange Bowl was a special night for Clemson’s seventh-year head coach perhaps the most important in his tenure came exactly six years ago this Saturday.
In his first three attempts at beating a ranked opponent, Swinney came close, but his teams could not get over the hump.
In 2008 against No. 24 Florida State, the Tigers held their own but fell short, 41-27, in Tallahassee, Fla. The next year, against No. 15 Georgia Tech, the Tigers rallied from 24-0 down to take a three-point lead, but Tech scored the game’s final six points for a 30-27 victory.
Later that season in a torrential down pour in Death Valley, 15th-ranked TCU got a late Andy Dalton touchdown pass to escape Clemson with a 14-10 victory.
But following an unexplainable loss at Maryland two weeks before in which the Tigers fell to 2-3 on the year, no one gave Clemson much of a shot to beat the 8th-ranked Miami Hurricanes on October 24, 2009.
“That’s one of the best games I have been a part of,” Swinney said.
It was a crazy game.
Noticing Miami safety Randy Phillips was cheating on a corner route on the Tigers’ previous series, wide receiver Jacoby Ford went over to Swinney and then offensive coordinator Billy Napier and told them what he was seeing. Before the Tigers took to the field following a 22-yard Matt Bosher field goal that gave Miami a three-point lead in overtime, Swinney, along with Ford, explained to the rest of the team what they were going to do.
What Ford did after that was haul in Kyle Parker’s pass at the Miami seven-yard line before darting into the end zone to give Clemson an improbable, 40-37, victory.
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“I’ll never forget that kick return by (C.J.) Spiller, the wheel route to Spiller, the overtime play to Jacoby (Ford) or the throw by KP (Kyle Parker),” Swinney said.
The win at Miami was Clemson’s highest-ranked road win since the 1981 team beat an eighth-ranked North Carolina team in Chapel Hill.
“It’s funny how that works out,” Parker said. “He drew it up and said he was going to run this route with the safety and I was like ‘We are going to catch this and we are going to win it.’ And it happened.”
It happened because Ford, who typically would run a corner route on a play Swinney called “Vol” came out of his route, gave a head fake and then sprinted across the middle. Phillips jumped the route, like Ford thought he would, when the head fake came and trailed Ford across the middle as Parker hit him in stride for the game-winner.
“Jacoby came off the field and said he thought ‘The safety was really over playing. I think we can nod him and go back inside on him,’ so we went over and drew it up on the sideline, literally, and said this is what we are going to get in overtime and this is what we are going to do,” Swinney said. “We called it ‘Vol alert’ and we were going to key the safety and if his leverage took him outside then (Jacoby) was going to go post and if he stayed inside it would have been a flag.
“So it was a read. We drew it up for Kyle and them over on the sideline and asked if everyone knew what they were doing and Kyle said ‘Yes sir.’”
Parker, who earlier threw an interception in the end zone that cost Clemson at least three points, definitely knew what he was doing. Parker forgot about the interception, and a third quarter fumble that defensive tackle Marcus Robinson returned 53 yards for a score, and rallied the Tigers for the seventh time in the afternoon.
The gun slinger finished the evening 25-for-37 for 326 yards and three touchdowns, while out playing Miami’s Jacory Harris, who threw for 256 yards and two scores, but was picked off three times. Safety DeAndre McDaniel had two of those three, including one he returned 23 yards for a touchdown.
On the winning touchdown, Parker looked left twice, holding the backside safety and came back to Ford, who was wide open crossing the middle of the field.
There was no quit any of the Tigers that afternoon, even when things looked bleak following Parker’s interception in the end zone with 5:37 to play. But the defense, which was shredded for much of the day, came up with a three-and-out on the ensuing possession. Then Parker drove the offense right down the field to set up Richard Jackson’s 30-yard field goal with five seconds left to force overtime.
In overtime, the defense again stepped up after Miami running back Craig Cooper ran 19 yards to the Clemson six on the first play. But the next three Miami plays netted one yard and Bosher was forced to kick a 22-yard field goal.
Three plays later, Ford drew up the game-winning touchdown.
“We made plenty of mistakes that could have cost us the game,” Swinney said. “But they believed with poise, they played with confidence, they believed all the way to the end, made some good adjustments and I just couldn’t be more proud of our kids.”
After the victory, Swinney said to his team in the locker room, “CLEMSON! CLEMSON! HERE WE COME!”
The win over the Hurricanes was part of six straight for the Tigers in 2009, a streak that landed the program in the ACC Championship Game for the first time. Clemson went on to finish the season 9-5 and 6-2 in the ACC, which included a 21-13 victory over Kentucky in the Music City Bowl and a No. 24 final ranking in the AP poll.
“We got off to a slow start that year, and we went on to win six in a row and beat Florida State,” Swinney said. “It was a fun year and we were just getting started.”
In a way, you can say that win in Miami on October 24, 2009, is responsible for where the Clemson program is today. That win helped the Tigers land future players, like Sammy Watkins, from the Miami area, while it also showed everyone that Clemson is capable of beating anyone on its schedule, no matter how good the opponent might be.
By the way, Saturday’s game at Sun Life Stadium will be the sixth anniversary of Clemson’s historic first victory over a ranked opponent in the Swinney Era.
“It was an awesome night. There were a lot of playmakers on that field. They were top-10 in the country and I think that was our first top-10 win. If you go back and look at that game, there were a lot of NFL players on both sides. It was an electric day,” Swinney said.