Everyone likes to bash on Swinney and the coaching staff.  And no doubt they are to blame for many of the problems with the team this season (and in previous seasons.) 

But what about the players?  What is their accountability?  It seems we always assume that if the coaches had just done this or that, used this scheme or made that call instead, that games would have been won. 

Unfortunately the players are not inanimate chess pieces that always perform exactly as told by the person directing them.

Kyle Parker has played QB for a while now.  He is not new to the position.  He has probabaly been playing,and getting coached to play QB, since middle school.

I am completely confident that every one of those coaches, up to and including the ones he has now, has coached him not to roll out of the pocket when there is no pressure, and then throw a lame lob pass back across his body to no one in particular in a crowd of defenders.

Maybe the playcall was wrong for the situation.  Maybe the play design was wrong.  Maybe the wrong personnel were on the field.  No matter, that was a completely absurd play, and it ws 100% on Parker, not the coaches, or the amount of coaching he has received.  He has been instructed on how to do it plenty of times by now.  If he were in the 8th grade, it might be understandable, but as a RS sophomore,  you can't put that on the coaches.

This team had every reason to come out on fire Saturday after being given a 2nd chance to get to the ACCCG by NC State, but instead, they played like a 2-5 team.  For a large part of the 1st half the defense was playing touch football.  Again, maybe the scheme or playcall was incorrect, but the players themselves played badly.

I am not saying this to excuse the staff for their shortcomings this season.  But in my opinion this loss rests as much with the players themselves.  I don't think it would have mattered who was standing on the sidelines or up in the booth calling plays this past Saturday.  The Tigers played like crap.