In its season-opening victory over Wofford last Saturday, 12th-ranked Clemson racked up 533 total yards. It rushed for 222 yards and threw for 311.
On defense, the Tigers were just as impressive, if not more. They held the Terriers to 213 total yards, including just 123 on the ground. All in all, the 49-10 victory was a good start.
“It is never as good as it seems and it is as never bad as it seems,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said on Tuesday during his weekly press conference with the media.
That’s the message Swinney gave his players before heading onto the practice fields Monday evening as they began preparations for Saturday’s Appalachian State game in Death Valley.
“We have a lot to improve on. I’m looking for a lot of improvement from my perspective,” Swinney said. “We had some errors.”
Swinney pointed out several things he would like to see his team improve on against the Mountaineers, in particular the turnovers and penalties. The Tigers turned the ball over two times and had six penalties for 55 yards.
“We had turnovers. We had a really bad decision on a punt return by Ray Ray (McCloud). We had a muff, by (Hunter) Renfrow. Those are things we can correct. We had more penalties than our opponent. We have to get that fixed. That’s part of our plan to win,” Swinney said. “We had more margin for error in that game. But as we move through the season, our margin for error is going to shrink down.”
That margin for error will shrink a little bit on Saturday. Appalachian State is coming of a 49-0 victory over Howard, its seventh straight victory, dating back to last season’s six-game winning streak to end the year.
“One of the things I always talk to our team about is we talk about celebrating wins. It’s hard to win a game,” Swinney said. “People really don’t have an understanding on just how it is to win. That just goes to show you. They have the fifth longest winning streak in the country with seven wins, and I think Tim (Bourret) told me yesterday we have the ninth longest winning streak with four wins in a row, which ain’t many.
“That’s the perspective on how hard it is to win a football game, and especially to consistently win week in and week out. I don’t care who you play, it is hard to do that. These guys have been impressive.”
The Mountaineers (1-0) are impressive enough Swinney says the Tigers have to show improvement this week.
“I’m looking for certain things from individual guys. Maybe everyone thinks certain guys play great. But the grade was not very good because their technique and their fundamentals were not what they needed to be,” Swinney said. “I’m looking for guys to grade better.”
The Clemson coach told those players that did not grade as well that their performance was not winning football. He wants them to take a little more pride in their own performance, and to do those little things better than they did against Wofford.
“It’s nothing anybody sitting in the stands will notice, or pays attention to, or even cares about because you are getting the result that you want. But from my perspective, as a coach, I’m looking at how we grade everybody and evaluate that, I’m looking for improvement from a lot of guys.”
Swinney said he was pleased with his starters overall, but he wants to see consistency from their execution, and that starts this week.
“Can we make the right adjustments and continue to do a good job taking care of the football, which I thought we did,” he said.