Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney held his Sunday teleconference where he reviewed Saturday’s win over Ball State and looked ahead to Furman.

Opening Statement

Dabo:  As I said last night just a good solid win.  We are proud of our guys for coming out and taking care of business early.  We set the tempo early in the game and pretty much had the game in hand at halftime.  It was a real positive to be able to play a lot of guys.  We have a bunch of coaching that we can do off of this tape, not just the starters as it was last week.  I think we played 80 players so we have a chance to really hopefully grow as a football team and teach a lot of guys from game experience.

Offensively it was a fast start.  We played with a lot of confidence and scored a lot of points.  Last week we rushed the ball for 300 and some yards and this week we threw it for 300 and some yards so that is a real positive.  I was very pleased with the quarterback play.  We were 33-44 and we played four quarterbacks.  Our third down percentage was outstanding.  We didn’t give up any sacks and we had no turnovers.  We got our backs involved a little bit in the passing game.  And just overall I thought we played solid and a lot of our backups that came in did some good things.  They made some mistakes but did some good things.  The disappointment offensively was we still had a couple of penalties and a couple of drops.  We just have to get a couple of guys to play a little bit better and play up to what their capabilities are.

Tajh was the player of the game offensively.  Travis Blanks was the player of the game defensively.  That really says a lot for a true freshman coming in here and we are really just high on him with his abilities and he just makes plays.

The positives were we held them to 128 yards passing.  We forced back to back turnovers which we got 14 points off of.  Two weeks in a row I am very pleased with our redzone defense and in third down.  You hold a team to 3 out of 14 on third down then you will have a chance to win a lot of games.

I thought we got better in several areas.  We were very poor from a rush defense standpoint.  The big thing there and it is still a little bit of a work in progress is we have to be gap sound and everyone has to understand who has contain.  We have to tackle and we have to make sure we take the right pursuit lanes.  Those are things that are very coachable and things that we can improve upon.  And we had a couple of penalties where if technique wise we do a little bit better job we could avoid those.

Overall it was a good win and I am proud of our team.  Again we are just kind of focused on being business like and it has to be the same approach this week.

Dabo:  Well it is just the same thing that we have been doing.  We just talk about ourselves.  Everybody is a faceless nameless opponent.  That is just how we talk about it.  We spend a lot of time talking to these guys about our formula for success, our plan to win.  That is really what our focus is and if we can continue to focus on that and to come every day and try to win that day then eventually we will look up and see what we got done.  Right now we just have to keep our head down and stay dialed in on the task at hand and that is Furman this week.  It is really about us and how we prepare and how we play.

Hopefully this team will do like they did last week.  They showed up ready and the coaches did a good job of getting them ready and we were able to get control pretty quick.

At one point in the first half you were really in coach Venables face on the sideline.  Was that frustration with the way the run defense was playing or what?

No, no actually we had…well there was no frustration at all.  That was simply he didn’t want me to kick it on the 61 yarder.  That was really all that was.  And I value everybody’s input but ultimately I have to make the decision and I decided to go for it and that is what we did.

I knew the clock was going to run out.  He was worried about having another play.  That was really all that was.

You got the last laugh on that one.

Dabo:  Yeah, how bout that,  61 yarder.  Sometimes I actually do something right.  What a kick man.  I have seen him do it in practice.  I spend a lot of time with those guys.  When we are doing walkthroughs and stuff a lot of times I go over there with the kickers.  He has made one from 70.  I have seen him make a kick from 70 yards.  He has a big, big leg.  It was just really neat to be able to see him do that.  I have been saying all along.  I told the team, we have kicked some long field goals in our scrimmages.  He would kick 56 or 57 yarders in scrimmages in camp.  I have been saying if we get the right opportunity.  Now obviously if they had two minutes remaining on the clock we wouldn’t have done that but with eight seconds the clock is going to run out and I wanted to give him a chance to do it and it really kind of gave us a little bit of momentum going into the half.

If the opportunity comes up I assume you would go for it again?

Well we tried one in the Auburn game.  Now Catanzaro is incredibly accurate.  He is probably  54.  That is probably about his range and again he is a very, very accurate guy.  That is why he is the kicker.  He won the job.  He has been incredible consistent, but Spencer has the big leg that has a chance if you get beyond that.  If it is a situation like we had then you can take a shot at it.

You don’t get first halves like that very often.  Are there any concerns the guys on offense might think they don’t have to work hard or do you not worry because of the leadership on offense?

That is what the leadership of the team if for and that is what our job as coaches is.  But listen I know we have racked up a bunch of yards but there is so much to coach.  There are tons of things that we can improve upon.  There are lots of things we can do better and mistakes that were made.  They may not show up to the naked eye but we certainly know what they are.

We have to continue to coach and we have to get them to stay focused on the preparation process and just stay within our system.  That is the message.  They are playing within the system.  That is why they are having success.  We have good players but if we will stay focused on our formula, and it has to come every single day, then we have a chance to continue to have some success.

How good is it that Nuk had an opportunity to get a breakout on his own the past two games?

He was never lost by us.  He caught over 70 balls last year but for whatever reason the media and everyone just talked about Sammy because he obviously was an explosive freshman.  You just don’t see many freshman doing that.  But Nuk doesn’t care about any of that stuff.  All he cares about is winning.  He just wants to win.  Stats are not important to him.  He is a very team oriented guy.  But it is great to see him step up and really be a go to guy for us and make huge plays.  Last week was just incredible what he did at Auburn to come back and have three touchdowns and tie a school record.  He is off to a good start.  In fact I told Sammy after the game he better get back in a hurry or people are going to forget all about him.

That is another thing.  I am excited to get Sammy back.  It is going to be fun to have him back on the field.  Obviously he needs to get some good work this week.  Hopefully he will pickup where he left off.

Injury Update

Dabo:  We have Beasley and he looks like he will be okay.  He has a sprained MCL.  We will probably know more on Wednesday about him and whether or not he is going to go this week.  He looks pretty good.  He didn’t really have much swelling at all.  I am very encouraged about him.

Tig Willard he has what they are calling a sprained shoulder.  He left the game and was a little sore this morning.  So the same deal.  We will probably hold him out of contact early in the week and probably by Wednesday be able to make a call one way or the other.  Neither one of those are serious types of injuries.

D.J. Howard bruised his trap and he is okay.

Tony Steward had a mild hamstring pull late in the game which was disappointing because we really wanted to get him some playing time at linebacker but he looked good today so hopefully he will be back ready to go by Tuesday.  Hopefully he will be able to get some really good playing time this weekend.

How important has Andre been with Sammy Watkins out?

He has been great.  We rushed the ball for 328 yards last week.  He gives us great balance.  He gives us a home run threat back there.  He gives us a veteran guy that has been in a lot of battles.  His leadership has been outstanding and he is an inspiring type teammate.

He has been great and hopefully he will continue to do that.  He played about a quarter and a half I think Saturday.

Did you hear about C.J. Spiller’s day for the Bills?

Dabo – We just got out of a staff meeting and I went in to get something to eat and a couple of the guys in there were talking about it.  They said he had a big day today but I haven’t seen anything stat wise.

Tim Bourret – He had 169 yards rushing.

Dabo – That is my man.  That is not surprising.  This is year three so it will be a big year for him.  I will be surprised if he doesn’t have a great season.