Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney held a teleconference Sunday night to review the game with Georgia.  Here is a transcript of the call.

Opening Statement

We have had an opportunity to study the tape.  We have learned a lot about our guys that sometimes may take people four or five games to learn.  First games are tough that is for sure, but first games against good teams are even tougher.  It is a risk you take when you schedule this type of games.  I like how our guys competed.  I certainly wish the outcome had been different.

I think for three quarters it was a heck of a ballgame.  It was a three point ballgame going into the fourth quarter.  We just needed a couple of plays that we just couldn’t come up with on either side of the ball in that fourth quarter to get the momentum back.

Again Georgia is a great football team.  I think they did an excellent job of finding a way to win.  As I said yesterday it is never as bad or good as it seems.  The margin of error is very small in a game like that.  But we want to compete and we want to be the best.  I do think Georgia deserved to win and we didn’t.  It was just a poor seven or eight minutes in that fourth quarter.

For us here it is a learning opportunity.  We stay confident.  We flush this and learn from it.  We focus on the little things.  We have to do a great job of leading and teaching and motivating as coaches.

We have 11 more opportunities.  All we know about our football team right now from that standpoint is that we are not going to win them all.  We have a great full season in front of us.  I don’t have any doubt that we learned a lot about our football team last night that we will be able to teach from.  Like I said some teams may be three or four games before they get that opportunity.  Again it is a great coaching opportunity.

I know the leadership of our team has already responded to be honest with you.  I like how they have picked up the pieces.

I think offensively it is about a good a first half as we have had.  It was just a great first half.  We missed a couple of opportunities with a couple of drops that slowed us down, but I thought we were very prepared for what we saw.  We were 7 of 13 on third down in the first half.  All of a sudden in the second half things just kind of changed.  We didn’t really do anything different.  We had some mental errors.  The field position was really just awful.  Our third down was poor.  We just had some mistakes that we hadn’t made.  But I don’t think the score was indicative of the game.

I thought our defense for three quarters played very well, played very well.  In the first half the same thing we felt really good about what we had gotten done.  We go into the fourth quarter and it is a three point game.  We couldn’t get field position the whole second half.  We finally flipped the field and it is a three point game and they go 82 yards to go up ten.  It was still a heck of a ball game and we go three and out and they have two one play scores.  They did a really nice job of trying to get outside and we didn’t contain the ball very well.  We had some poor hits but more importantly we had some bad missed tackles on the edge where cracked us.  There was just about a four minute stretch in the fourth quarter where it got away from us.

I thought our guys played hard.  The time of possession along with the field position in the second half was definitely a critical factor in the outcome of the game.

I think two other huge critical factors from the first half, we were up a touchdown and the 100 yard kick return and the missed field goal.  That was ten points.  If we could just correct those two things then we are up a touchdown in the fourth quarter if we don’t change anything else.  That is how critical a few plays can be as far as the impact to a game.

I thought Todd Gurley was the best player on the field.  It wasn’t even close.  Every now and then in this business you come across a guy that you just tip your hat to and he is a special player.  He was definitely the difference in the game for Georgia.

We will learn from it and get better from it.

Special teams I thought Pinion did a nice job for the most part.  TJ Green it looks like he is going to be a guy that is really effective for us in the return game.  They did a great job with the field position keeping us deep.  I think it is only the second time in 17 years that we have had the average starting position inside our own 20.  It is hard to do that when you are playing a good team.  We got a little conservative probably backed up.

Again at the end of the day we weren’t good enough to win it and couldn’t finish it the way we wanted to.

The guys played hard.  The effort was good.

Injury Report

We came out of it relatively healthy.  I am very disappointed that we lost Sam Cooper.  That was a big factor for us.  He is a big, strong, physical guy.  We really had to scramble there right before the game.  He broke his fibula in pregame warmups running a rout.  I have never had that happen before.

Initially I was thinking he is out for the year, but it is a non-weight baring bone and the good news for him and for us is they believe he could be back in about three weeks.  He is a senior and a great leader for us so I am happy that his season is not over and that we will get him back.  That was a big loss for us for sure, especially in the running game.

Question:  What is the most pressing thing that needs to be addressed before you play this week?

The biggest thing is offensively just staying consistent.  For whatever reason we played 50 plays of just really good football and then it was like a switch flipped and we had some mental errors that we hadn’t had with really nothing different.  We had some poor fundamental things in pass protection that we can correct.  Everything is very correctable.

The keys plays that we missed on that were there.  Those are the kind of things if you are going to win this type of game you are talking a very small margin of error on the road against what is probably going to be a solid top ten team.  You have to make those type of plays.

I thought what we did in the first half was awesome.  We had control of the game.  We had them on their heels.  The only times we didn’t score was we had the three drops that killed drives and we missed a field goal.  On that missed field goal we thought we had the ball at the three yard line but Mike Williams had stepped out of bounds.

In the second half, again we probably got a little conservative being backed up so much.  I think our average starting position in the third quarter was the 14 yard line.  We just didn’t get that big play that we needed.  That was probably the biggest disappointment and thing we will have to get corrected.

On the defensive side again I thought it was three really good quarters of football.  It was two teams batting it out.  Give Georgia some credit that they started to go outside and around us.  We were holding up really well inside with our defensive tackles.  I thought they played really well, especially DeShawn and Grady.  They did a good job of cranking us and splitting us.  Again things that we can correct and learn from but when you are playing against a guy like Gurley you don’t have a lot of room for error.  You miss the tackle, they were forcing our corners to have to come up and make the tackles and we missed a couple of tackles, a couple of key ones.  It turned into big plays for them.  I think going into the fourth quarter they only had 117 yards rushing and we had 116.  It was about a four minute stretch there where it just got away from us.  I think our defense, we kept them on the field way too much.  The time of possession was way out of wack in the second half.

Question:  Is Artavis Scott okay?  It looked like he went of limping?

Yeah, he got banged up but he came back.

There were a lot of bright spots.  I know everyone just looks at the scoreboard and there is nothing to be happy about.  There were a ton of bright spots in that game and Artavis was one of them.  And Demarre Kitt.  I know he didn’t get a catch but both of those guys had the right look in their eye.  Artavis made a great play.

Kalon Davis played tremendous.  He just played great.  He was our offensive player of the game.  Reid Webster played well.  Those two guys I was very encouraged with them.

Tony Steward played really well defensively and he was the special teams player of the game.  I think he had four tackles on special teams for us.

Robert Smith was our defensive player of the game.  He just gave us everything he had.’

It was good to see Jay Jay McCullough get in there.  He hadn’t really gotten the reps at the position we had to put him at with Cooper gone.  He really did a nice job.  He tried to be physical.

I thought Cole Stoudt played very well.  He had about three plays that he would like to have back.  But he played very well.

It was good to get DeShaun Watson going.  His first drive was tremendous.  He got us into the right check for that touchdown pass.  He did a great job with that.  He had a couple of plays that he would like to have back.

Again there were a lot of positives, just not a lot of room for error.  We made too many mistakes in some critical situations.

Question:  It seemed like the tight ends were pretty non existent in the passing game.  Did you see that in the film?

That wasn’t hard to see in the film because I think we only had two catches.  It was pretty easy to see.  Seckinger had one and McCullough had one late.  We didn’t get much done in that second half at all.  In the first half we were really trying to run the football and we ran it really well.  We felt good about what we were doing.

In the second half first of all we didn’t get it very much.  When we got it we were three and out or backed up.  We just couldn’t put it together.  It was always one guy here or two guys there.  It was amazing because in the first half we played so well.  But that is our job as coaches to keep them executing at a high level.  We didn’t do a good job of that.

Question:  On the kickoff return it looked like Gallman was a little hesitant.  Is that what sprung Gurley?

It wasn’t just him.  We kind of waggled the wrong way.  We tried to go around the wall instead of through it.  Somebody has to take it out and we didn’t do a good job of that.  They came down hill and took it to the house.  Again those are things that you coach from.