Clemson’s DBs wear boxing gloves in practice, which sounds like a great idea

Earlier this month, ESPN’s Andrea Adelson reported on an outside-the-box Clemson practice technique: boxing gloves for defensive backs.

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has his defensive backs in boxing gloves during practice to help reduce pass interference penalties. He said he got the idea from Patriots coach Bill Belichick. “That’s what we started doing in camp in our 1-on-1 periods to challenge them and stress them to win with their feet, play great technique, not grab,” Swinney said. “We’ve been much improved, hope it continues in the second half.”

Then last Thursday, video surfaced of some players practicing with them on to, well, box — which was likely bound to happen anyway.

This week, Swinney was asked about the video that surfaced on social media, and the head coach called it “stupid.”

“It was brought to my attention and obviously it was something we won’t tolerate that,” Swinney said via The State. “We’re not 10 years old. We’re not eight. We’re grown men… It’s not a frat house. It’s not a romper room. And so that’s kind of what I told them. This is a new house. It’s really nice. And that locker room is not a romper room. This ain’t kindergarten. And so yeah, I don’t think you’re going to have any more problems with that.”

The concept of putting boxing gloves on DBs is an interesting idea, and given that Swinney’s a national championship-winning coach and Belichick is Belichick, it’s hard to question either of them for doing it.

Clemson’s defensive back recruiting is excellent. The Tigers have good enough players on their back end that none of them should need to grab receivers as a matter of habit. Grabbing is for players who aren’t fast enough or agile enough to keep up. It results in pass interference penalties, which result in large chunks of yardage.

Wearing boxing gloves doesn’t make it impossible to grab someone, obviously:

But it does make it a lot more difficult, and wrapping up a receiver with an entire arm would be almost impossible for a DB to get away with. The far more common form of pass interference that sometimes doesn’t get called is just little nipping at the jersey.

Clemson has allowed 5.6 yards per pass attempt this season, which is ninth in the country. A lot of that’s due to the Tigers’ unstoppable defensive front, but proper technique in the secondary has probably helped the cause, too.