Clemson getting ‘a mountain of a man’ in Pennington

Clemson signed Dietrick Pennington in December as an offensive lineman. But there was a time when the two-way lineman from Evangelical Christian School in Memphis, Tenn., desired to play on the defensive side of the ball.

“He played both, but he really wanted to play D-line,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said during the program’s National Signing Day show on Dec. 16. “And then I think he realized, you know what, I’ve got a really bright future as an offensive lineman.”

Swinney recalls seeing Pennington work out with both the offensive and defensive linemen at one of Clemson’s high school football camps in the summer of 2019, and Swinney remembers thinking at the time about how much…