CLEMSON — It appears Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has reached out to an old colleague to be his new defensive ends coach.

The Clemson Insider confirmed Saturday afternoon that Chris Rumph has emerged as Swinney’s top candidate to replace Lemanski Hall as Clemson’s defensive ends coach. Swinney parted ways with Hall on Thursday.

Rumph coached at Clemson from 2006-’10, including the first two years of Swinney’s tenure as the Tigers’ head coach. Like the offensive line coach position, Swinney is also filling, the move to get a new defensive ends coach will be a swift one according to multiple sources.

The Clemson University Board of Trustees did notify the media on Saturday that the Compensation Committee called a special web/teleconference meeting for Monday morning to approve football assistant coaches’ contracts.

Rumph currently is the defensive line coach for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings. However, he has been on a leave of absence due to personal reasons for the last six weeks.

During his time at Clemson, Rumph helped coach a defense that allowed 16.2 points per game in 2006, 18.7 in 2007, 17.3 in 2008, 20.4 in 2009 and 18.7 in 2010. He coached All-American defensive ends Gaines Adams (2006) and Da’Quan Bowers (2010).

Both Adams (2006) and Bowers (2010) earned ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors. Bowers had a monster season in 2010, as he won the Bronko Nagurski Award in 2010 as the nation’s top defensive player. He also won the Ted Hendricks Award as the nation’s best defensive end.

Bowers was a second-round pick by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2011 NFL Draft, while Adams was the No. 4 overall pick by the Buccaneers in the 2007 NFL Draft.

Rumph also coached defensive end Ricky Sapp, who was a second-team All-ACC selection in 2007 and was a fifth-round draft pick by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2010 NFL Draft.

Prior to coming to Clemson, Rumph was a graduate assistant at his alma mater, the University of South Carolina (1997), while serving as the head coach at his high school alma mater, Calhoun County, from 1997-2001. He then coached at S.C. State in 2002 before coaching at Memphis from 2003-’05.

After leaving Clemson, Rumph moved to Alabama where he helped the Crimson Tide win back-to-back national championships in 2011 and 2012.

He then left Alabama following the 2013 season to be Texas’ defensive line and assistant head coach for one season and then joined the staff at Florida as the co-defensive coordinator from 2015-’17.

Rumph also served in the same capacities at Tennessee from 2018-’19. In 2020, he jumped to the NFL where he coached the Texans, Bears and the Vikings.

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