CLEMSON, S.C. — Korey Foreman visited Clemson last month for the program’s junior day. The No. 1 prospect in the country for the class of 2021, a 6-4, 265-pound strongside defensive end, made his way to Death Valley from Corona, Calif. The trip was about 2,300 miles across the country, and so when he finally stepped onto Frank Howard Field, he made sure to pay attention to how he felt.
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“It’s just — it’s nothing you can put into words to be honest,” Foreman told The Athletic recently. “When I went on the field, that’s when I knew. I looked around and I was like, ‘Oh my Gah.’ I feel like I could shock the world there. And that’s just how it is.”
Foreman is the latest top prospect to commit to play football at Clemson — a decision he announced on the evening of Jan. 26. That also makes him the newest face of an undeniable Tigers trend that keeps on going.
It is no secret Clemson has started to hoard the majority of the top defensive line talent in the nation, beginning the movement in the 2010s and now extending it.
Since Dabo Swinney’s interim tag was dropped and he took over as full-time head coach ahead of the 2009 season, Clemson has earned commitments from 19 top-10 defensive linemen, as ranked and classified by the 247Sports Composite. Eight were top-10 overall players in the country. That includes Foreman, who joins DL Bryan Bresee, out of Maryland, as the second consecutive No. 1 recruit to commit to Clemson — and to do it from out of state.
“It sold me,” Foreman said. “It’s D-Line U. … They’ve got everything there.”
Ask Swinney, and he has maintained for years that much of Clemson’s success throughout the program’s historic run to five consecutive College Football Playoffs started in the trenches, which is why his staff makes such an intentional effort recruiting those positions.
But here’s the secret: the formula to landing top defensive line talent hasn’t actually been all that complicated for the Tigers. Clemson has been ahead of the curve, while other programs are playing catch up.
It all started in March of 2009 when Swinney, then 39, hired Dan Brooks, a 25-year veteran as an assistant coach, to lead Clemson’s defensive line. Swinney, after all, was hired in large part because of his ability to connect with and recruit young players. Together, he and Brooks would recruit locally as Clemson built its image, find the hidden gems in the form of underrated prospects and then make sure to develop all levels of talent.
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Once Clemson started executing the formula, the program became one of the premier destinations for NFL hopefuls along the D-line. And as Clemson has continued to deliver — Swinney has had 17 defensive linemen selected in the NFL Draft, with multiple selections in five of the last nine drafts — it in turn has allowed the brand to grow. Which brings Clemson to where it is now.
“Ten years ago, we weren’t going to go and get a Bryan Bresee. Ten years ago, we weren’t going to go get a Christian Wilkins,” Swinney said, noting the No. 13 pick in the draft in 2019.
“Occasionally, we got the guy that everybody wanted, but not all the time. So evaluation and development has been our key. Then as we’ve had success, we’ve been able to get more of a finished-product type of a guy.”
The inception of the defensive line dynasty started in the Carolinas.
Now retired, Brooks isn’t shy about sharing his tactics that worked so well for so long. He officially capped his coaching career around 4 a.m., cigar in hand, in the hours following Clemson’s 2016 national title, when he informed Swinney of his decision. The Carolinas, he says now, represented his most fertile recruiting soil.
“I think you’ve got to recruit good players and you’ve got to keep them. But one of the biggest things I’ll tell you up front, and too many people have found out now, but it’s almost like there are so many defensive linemen in the North and South Carolina area that it just — I don’t know,” he said. “It may be as good as anywhere in the country just for that position.”
He would know.
Before Brooks came to Clemson in 2009, he spent four seasons as Florida’s defensive line coach from 1984-87, six seasons as North Carolina’s defensive line coach under Mack Brown from 1988-93, then 15 seasons as Tennessee’s defensive line coach from 1993 through 2008. It was in his stint with the Volunteers, during which Tennessee won a national title in 1998, that his secret got out. His defensive line that year gave it away — Shaun Ellis of Anderson, S.C., Corey Terry of Warrenton, N.C., Darwin Walker of Walterboro, S.C., and Jeff Coleman of Gaffney, S.C.
“I didn’t want anybody to find out,” Brooks said, laughing. “After we won the national championship at Tennessee in ’98, (a reporter) wrote a story about the ‘Carolina Vols.’ It just made my job a lot harder.”
Dan Brooks, now retired, helped launch Clemson’s D-line domination. (Fred Kfoury III / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Indeed, a look back at Clemson’s defensive line commits in Brooks’ time with the program shows that he continued to keep players home as often as possible. From 2009 until his final year in 2016, Clemson had 32 commits listed as defensive linemen, according to current data from 247Sports. Nineteen were from the Carolinas. That included top talent such as defensive end Shaq Lawson (Central, S.C.) and defensive tackle Lawrence (Wake Forest, N.C.), both of whom became first-round NFL Draft picks.
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Since Brooks left, defensive tackles coach Todd Bates and defensive ends coach Lemanski Hall have continued to tap into the local pool, grabbing Carolinas natives such as end Justin Foster in 2017, end Xavier Thomas in 2018, end KJ Henry in 2018, tackle Josh Belk in 2018 (who transferred) and tackle Demonte Capehart in 2020. All five were ranked in the top 12 of his respective position for his respective class, nationally.
Clemson’s projected starting lineup of returning players or 2020 would have three spots filled by those from the Carolinas: Foster, Thomas and Nyles Pinckney. Floridian Tyler Davis is the talented outlier.
But for every recruiting superstar Clemson has landed from the Carolinas, the Tigers are now operating at that same pace nationally. The 2019 class was Swinney’s first without a defensive lineman from the region, the program instead signing players from Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri and Michigan.
Plus: for every four-or five-star prospect everyone in the nation has wanted, Clemson has also secured the quieter, less-known prospects. It’s a staple of the program, something that won’t change anytime soon.
“We signed a kid named Grady Jarrett,” Brooks said. “You’re probably familiar with him.”
Jarrett was a three-star out of Georgia who was only 6-0 and 282 pounds when he came to Clemson. He ranked No. 1,161 nationally in the 247Sports Composite.
DeShawn Wiliams was also a three-star, No. 591 nationally.
Andre Branch ranked No. 1,229; Albert Huggins was a career backup at Clemson and D.J. Reader entered the program listed as an offensive lineman also playing on the baseball team before he became a full-time defensive tackle.
Yet all five made it to the NFL in large part thanks to Clemson’s evaluation process, which identified them as potential contributors back in their high school days. Then they continued to progress.
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“It’s a tremendous asset when you can have them in camp and you’re actually coaching the guy yourself,” Brooks said. “The coaching profession will always say you can’t measure heart, but you try to find out what they’re all about. When you find a guy like Grady, who has kind of got that little chip on his shoulder, that’s the reason I’ve always said you just don’t play measurables.
“If you stood Grady Jarrett and Dexter Lawrence beside each other, you’d see a tremendous difference. Both of them are great players on their own, but Dexter’s a 6-5, 6-6, 310-pound guy. … If a guy will play hard and you can find that he will play hard all the time, then you feel like, ‘I can coach this guy. I can work with that.’”
Recruits tend to take inventory of the one-two evaluation and development punch. It’s evident at other positions, too. Oakland Raiders wide receiver Hunter Renfrow was a walk-on, as was current Clemson safety Nolan Turner. Isaiah Simmons was a three-star defensive recruit in 2016 who is expected to be a top-10 pick in April’s 2020 NFL Draft.
But there’s something about the defensive line that particularly lends itself to that development, perhaps because of the physical maturation that can occur. Even now, as the winners of two national titles in the past four seasons, Clemson is still willingly taking defensive line recruits who need some growth.
“We took two developmental guys last year in Ruke (Orhorhoro) and Etinosa Reuben. Really high-potential guys, but man, they only played their junior and senior years of high school,” Swinney said. “They were soccer players and basketball players.”
The biggest difference 10 years later, Swinney says, is that now Clemson’s brand has grown, which attracts the top talent to the program organically.
“Our evaluation is still critical. Our development is still critical,” he said. “But just where we are brand-wise, we’re just attracting more of a finished star.”
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As Swinney likes to point out, this generation of recruits has grown up with Clemson football regularly competing in the Playoffs and winning at least 10 games for nine consecutive seasons. The program can simultaneously reach Bresee in Maryland, Foreman in California, No. 7-ranked Myles Murphy in Georgia, Capehart right in the Tigers’ backyard in Columbia and the list goes on.
“Tre (Williams), he grew up in Connecticut pulling for a certain No. 42 who used to play there, Christian Wilkins,” Bates said of Clemson’s incoming defensive tackle this summer. “That’s one of the guys he tried to model his game after.”
With the 2020 class wrapped up, it’s now onto 2021 to snag a few teammates for Foreman, who has said he does not intend to take any other visits elsewhere.
He’s already in regular communication with Bresee, Williams and Clemson freshman quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei, who also headed to Clemson from California.
“It’s not really what they did differently, it was just how everything was up there,” Foreman said of his recruiting experience. “After talking to Dabo Swinney as much as I did that day, talking to the position coach as much as I did, everybody seemed to be locked in.
“I just loved it up there. Nothing’s topped it and nothing’s been compared to it from this point standing forward. I’m happy with my decisions.”
As for Brooks, retirement is treating him well as he recovers from knee surgery in Gatlinburg, Tenn. He’s happy to see Clemson’s defensive line thriving and the Tigers have a fan in him on Saturdays.
“I like to hear that,” Brooks said. “I like D-Line U.”
— The Athletic’s Antonio Morales contributed to this report.
(Photo of Bryan Bresee: Tim Heitman / USA Today)