By Will Vandervort.

After everything settled down and the television cameras, radio personalities and bloggers moved on, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney stayed and answered several questions for three of his regular writers—myself included—after the Orange & White Game. He spoke about his freshmen quarterbacks, his defense, Jay Guillermo and freshmen offensive tackles Mitch Hyatt and Jake Fruhmorgen.

Does the spring give you a feel of redshirting one or both of the freshmen quarterbacks?

Swinney: Heck no! I don’t know if we can redshirt anybody right now. We have so far to go until it is September. All four of those guys need to go into the summer thinking they are the starter and they need to prepare that way. That’s what we need. The national champion was on their third-team quarterback last year. We have to have everybody ready to go and develop that experience that we need.

How did you think the defense develop over the spring?

Swinney: We have a lot of work to do. Our first group, you are not going to notice a whole lot of difference from last year. You really will not. To be honest with you, we have about 13 or 14 guys that you really will not notice much difference from where we finished off. The biggest difference will be who runs in there to sub them. It is not in talent, but in experience, knowledge and all of that stuff. That is what we have to get done. We have to sure up the gap between the ones and the twos defensively. Last year, there really wasn’t a gap except for a couple of places, but it was not much. They just went and played. Our depth was phenomenal. Our depth (this year) is good, but we have so many guys that have a lot to learn. But we are going to be solid on defense.

Did you play more frontline guys longer in the spring game?

Swinney: Not really. At the start of the second half we always play the backups for one series for offense and one series for defense and then we let them play. We run the clock after that. We had a couple of guys that we pulled out. We pulled out Mike Williams, Shaq (Lawson), (D.J.) Reader and a couple of those guys, but you don’t have a lot of subs when you split the teams.

Do you think Mitch (Hyatt) will remember this day going up against Shaq?

Swinney: Absolutely! That’s what I was telling him today. That first drive, his first ever career drive at Clemson, they went down and scored a touchdown. He was just smiling from ear-to-ear. It was fun watching all those (freshmen). You never see that. Fifteen guys, high school kids playing in their first college-type atmosphere. That was really cool to see. They did a nice job.

With Jay Guillermo, where are you at with him?

Swinney: I talked with Jay (Friday). I’m very encouraged about our conversation. He is doing all the things that he needs to do and hopefully he will keep doing that and he will be back with us at some point. That is really kind of all up to him.

He tweeted some displeasure about some kind of loan or something. Is he in good standing with the team?

Swinney: I don’t have any idea (of that). I don’t tweet so I don’t have a clue. There has not been anything on my desk about it.

What is the biggest thing Jake Fruhmorgen and Mitch Hyatt have to work on this summer?

Swinney: For Jake it is physically. Jake is weak upper body wise. He had the shoulder injury in the fall so he came in here a little behind with his upper body so it is going to be a big summer for him in developing the physical strength up top that he needs in order to be ready. He has to be ready for us. For Mitch it is the same thing. He has to continue to add that mass. He is 280-something now and he looks good, but the lower body development, but those two are going to be just fine. They love it. They are just like pigs in mud. They can’t get enough of it. They bring it.