After years behind the scenes, Wes Goodwin takes center stage for Clemson football

Wes Goodwin doesn’t like to cuss.

He doesn’t need a “get-back guy.”

And he’s certainly not going to accumulate bruises on his legs, gashes on his nose and blood on his face while playing scout-team quarterback against his first-team defense with no helmet, no pads and a Jimmy Greenbeans alter ego.

But just because Goodwin differs in strategy from his famously intense predecessor, Brent Venables, whose pursuits in those aforementioned fiery practices have been well documented, don’t think he cares any less about his job as the defensive coordinator for the No. 4 Clemson football team.

“I’m just as intense and as focused,” Goodwin said. “I might not be as outward (with it), but I promise you there’s nobody who wants to coach these guys harder and more intently than I do.”

Cerebral and unassuming, Goodwin, 37, represents half of coach Dabo Swinney’s great promoting-from-within gamble that will define a new stretch of Clemson football.

The Tigers maintained an unprecedented level of coordinator stability during a six-year streak of ACC championships and College Football Playoff appearances, as star offensive coordinator Tony Elliott and star defensive coordinator Venables declined various offers while helping Clemson win 2016 and 2018 national titles.

When Elliott and Venables finally uprooted for head-coaching gigs last December at Virginia and Oklahoma, respectively, Swinney skipped the national searches and hired two familiar faces as their replacements. Familiar to him, at least.

“I was well aware of what the headlines would be when I named Wes Goodwin to be the D coordinator at Clemson,” he said. “Everybody’s hitting Google like: ‘Who the heck is that?’ ”

Indeed, Goodwin’s name was a new one to even the most extreme of college football junkies. Here was a senior analyst who’d spent years working in the shadows and “living in a defensive staff room,” as he recently quipped … and now, with no career play-calling experience, he was just going to take over one of the sport’s best defenses over the past decade?

He sure was. But that’s an abbreviated résumé.

Wes Goodwin, boy genius

Behind Goodwin’s zero seasons as a full-time assistant are endorsements from Super Bowl champion coaches and comparisons to others, a near-photographic memory and a knack for gaining players’ trust with smarts and compassion — all qualities, coaches and players said, that have him primed for a smooth transition into a role he didn’t simply stumble into.

“It’s not just something that happened in December,” Goodwin said. “I’ve been thinking about this opportunity since before I got into this profession. This was always a long-term goal.”

A self-described small-town guy from population 1,800 Grove Hill, Alabama, Goodwin has spent a decade-plus absorbing the game from prominent college and NFL coaches, coordinators and players.

From Sylvester Croom and Ellis Johnson at Mississippi State to Bruce Arians and Larry Fitzgerald with the Arizona Cardinals to Swinney and Venables at Clemson, “I’ve tried to just soak up knowledge from whoever,” Goodwin said.

Aiding him in that quest was an “Rain Man”-esque recall capacity, one that prompted an early co-worker to nickname him “Weslichick” after Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots coach and six-time Super Bowl champion widely regarded as one of the sport’s masterminds.

Goodwin’s brain was, and still is, a Rolodex of flowcharts and fire zones and Pro Football Focus data. Kevin Steele, the first defensive coordinator he worked for at Clemson, once described Goodwin as having “a video game of every football game he’d ever seen in his head.”

Goodwin’s knack for absorbing and referencing specific plays is especially uncanny. Mickey Conn, Goodwin’s co-defensive coordinator at Clemson this season, described it as a bird’s-eye view from the ground level. Working from the field as a defensive analyst, Goodwin would casually scribble down and observe things others might need a box seat to catch.

“It’s like us filming with a camera,” Conn said. “He can just see it.”

As you’d imagine, those skills served Goodwin well in the film room across 10 years and two stints with the Tigers as an analyst. Put it this way: If “Jeopardy!” ever implemented a category on early Venables defenses, Ken Jennings and Amy Schneider would be on upset watch.

“Coach V would ask us about stuff from 2015 or 2014 or 2013, and Wes could find a clip right then and pull it up — or just state exactly what happened,” Clemson defensive ends coach Lemanski Hall said, laughing. “I’m not surprised, because I’ve been with Wes a little bit, but in those moments it still sometimes shocked me. I mean, I can barely remember last week.”

High expectations with Clemson

Much like first-year offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter, who’d turned down SEC and NFL gigs, Goodwin felt the pull from outside the Palmetto State. Three years as Arians’ right-hand man with the Cardinals between Clemson stints especially boosted his professional profile.

After his December promotion to defensive coordinator, Swinney said Goodwin had turned down “three or four linebacker jobs in the NFL” over the last three years. His old boss, Venables, had also pushed for Goodwin to join him at Oklahoma, ESPN reported.

Goodwin instead decided to keep blooming where he’s planted, to borrow a Swinneyism. Now he’s been entrusted with one of the sport’s toughest follow-up acts of 2022: replacing Venables, whose final Clemson defense allowed 14.8 points per game last year, second only to reigning national champion Georgia.

Luckily for him, he has quite the supporting cast.

Clemson’s defensive line is stacked with standouts, from former No. 1 overall recruit Bryan Bresee to sack artist Myles Murphy to veterans Tyler Davis, KJ Henry and Xavier Thomas. Trenton Simpson is a modern linebacker in every sense of the phrase, and safety Andrew Mukuba is the reigning ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year.

It’s an embarrassment of riches, even at linebacker and cornerback, where the Tigers lost two starters at each position but have a rotation of four- and five-star recruits vying to take their place. Clemson has 11 first-team spots but 16 to 18 players worthy of them, Goodwin said.

That’s the level of depth a team needs to contend for the College Football Playoff, which Clemson (10-3, 6-2 ACC) missed for the first time since 2015 last season.

Players and coaches said Goodwin, who prefers word association to football jargon and “coaching and correcting in the moment” to “blatantly showing up a guy,” can get them there. He already flashed those skills in holding Iowa State’s offense 165 yards below its season average in a Cheez-It Bowl win.

“Easy to talk to,” linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr. said.

“A very analytical person,” linebacker Keith Maguire said.

“We’ve always been high on Wes,” defensive end Murphy said. “We’ve never questioned his knowledge. If anything, he’s probably one of the smartest guys I know.”

Now, as Clemson’s Sept. 5 Chick-fil-A Kickoff opener at Georgia Tech (8 p.m., ESPN) approaches, it’s time for people outside the program to see the Way of Wes. Less cussing. Less get-backing. Less Jimmy Greenbeansing. But intense nonetheless.

And, Clemson hopes, just as effective.

“I know a lot of people may underestimate him, but hey, big surprises come in small packages,” defensive tackles coach Nick Eason said. “Who is Wes Goodwin? I guarantee you’ll find out.”

The Wes Goodwin file

Age: 37 years old

Hometown: Grove Hill, Alabama

Alma mater: Mississippi State, 2007

Coaching experience: Clemson graduate assistant (2009-11); Clemson defensive analyst (2012-14); Arizona Cardinals assistant to the head coach (2015-17); Clemson senior defensive analyst (2018-21); Clemson defensive coordinator/linebackers coach (2022)

Salary: $850,000 annually (three-year contract)

Family: Wife, Jennalee, and daughters, Emma and Allie