It’s like we’ve given up and moved on. Nothing to see here, back to your SEC obsession.

But a funny thing happened while Clemson slinked into out of sight, out of mind: Somebody made the biggest move of all this offseason.

“We gotta get better passing the ball,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has said over and over this offseason.

It won’t be by dipping into the lost souls of the transfer portal.

Georgia added a couple of wide receivers. Michigan upgraded its pass rush. USC will plug and play with another 10-plus additions, and LSU had the No. 1 portal class in the nation.

Clemson, meanwhile, added Garrett Riley, a game-changing, and elite offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach to an offense that had lost its way the past 2 seasons. Not by talent, by execution.

And that’s the key with this addition.

It’s not like Riley, the 33-year-old brother of USC coach Lincoln Riley, is walking into a program bereft of offensive talent. The program that follows one generational quarterback after the other hasn’t stopped recruiting better than anyone at the most important position on the field.

They’ve just not coached as well as they did with Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence. You can’t lose 2 assistant coaches (Jeff Scott, Tony Elliott) who ran the offense and coached the quarterbacks and were critical in 2 national championship runs, and automatically assume the next guy waiting in the barn is going to make it all work again.

As much as Swinney never veers from his philosophy — and, frankly, that’s what’s so endearing (and successful) about him — he was stuck in the Clemson mud with his loyalty to longtime assistant (and former Tigers quarterback) Brandon Streeter.

You can massage both sides of the argument of right or wrong to hire Streeter in the first place, but the most important takeaway is it only took 1 season for Swinney to read the room.

He knew it after Clemson was whitewashed by Tennessee in the Orange Bowl, after the Tigers scored 14 points on a defense that a month earlier gave up 63 to South Carolina. Took him less than 2 weeks to find the guy he wanted and less than that to pull the trigger after meeting and talking ball with Riley.

Riley is a perfect fit with the Clemson culture, a small-town guy with a big-time offense. A developer of quarterbacks, and an uncanny mind for play-calling.

He’ll bring the Air Raid offense to Clemson, an Air Raid offshoot his brother developed and perfected at Oklahoma. It’s a combination of Air Raid principles and downhill run game, much like the Art Briles Baylor offenses of a decade ago.    

What he did in Year 1 at TCU — after revitalizing the SMU offense and quarterback Tanner Modecai — was next level. Riley reenergized the career of nomad quarterback Max Duggan and got him to New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist.

The Horned Frogs had a running back (Kendre Miller) rush for 1,400 yards and 17 TDs, and a wide receiver (Quentin Johnston) with 1,000 yards receiving. Now imagine Will Shipley and Antonio Williams in that offense.

But more important, Riley’s offense was the very reason TCU went from 5-7 afterthought in 2021 to winning a Playoff game and playing in the national championship game.

Before we go further, yes, TCU lost by 58 to Georgia and scored 7 points. But TCU and Clemson, everyone, aren’t the same thing. Not by a country mile.

Riley is walking into a program that consistently recruits among the elite of college football. A program that has played a 5-star quarterback all but 1 season since 2014 — and still reached the Playoff with 4-star Kelly Bryant in 2017.

A program that has the best talent in the ACC and the easiest road to the Playoff. With all of the problems of last season, Clemson was still a handful of plays in a 1-point loss to South Carolina from advancing to the Playoff.

Does Swinney make the change if Clemson loses big to Georgia in the Playoff semifinals? Maybe. Or maybe he stays loyal and hopes Streeter figures it out.

Then you’re another year behind in the chase to return to the top of the mountain, where Clemson hasn’t been since Lawrence’s freshman season in 2018. The halcyon days of Lawrence and Watson, of Travis Etienne and Wayne Gallman, of Mike Williams  and Tee Higgins, seem like a lifetime ago.

Swinney and his staff didn’t forget how to recruit and develop, didn’t suddenly throw it into neutral and try to coast through the ACC the past 3 seasons. Make no mistake, this a 3-season shift — this goes all the way back to Lawrence’s last season, the first without co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott.

Scott and Tony Elliott were so good together, so adept a sharing play-calling duties and scheming defenses, one didn’t function without the other (at Clemson and USF, where Scott left for a head coaching job after the 2019 season).

Even though the Tigers averaged 43 points a game in 2020, the season was a discombobulated mess because of COVID, and Elliott and Streeter finding a rhythm, and Lawrence missing time with COVID. It got worse against a motivated Ohio State team in the Playoff semifinals.

Then 2021 arrived, and 5-star QB DJ Uiagalelei regressed in his first season as a starter under Elliott and Streeter. The offense averaged 26 points a game, and then followed that with a move to 33 points a game in 2022 under Streeter.

Now here we are with the hiring of Riley, a move that goes against Swinney’s loyalty to a fault.

“He’s a great fit for Clemson, a great fit for our personnel,” Swinney said.

He’s the best addition of the college football offseason.