Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney held his weekly Sunday teleconference to review the win over Notre Dame and give the latest on injuries. Here is a transcript from the teleconference.
Opening Statement
First of all I want to thank our fans for a great night. It was just an incredible atmosphere to play a college football game. For what we do that is what it is all about. It was just a tremendous job.
It was good to see us win the turnover battle. We knew that was going to be the key and now we are plus for the year on that side, back on the plus side. We won the penalty margin. We did have a couple of them that were disappointing.
I was really pleased with our special teams. We worked really hard over the last couple of weeks. It was good to see Teasdall in a game like that, with those types of conditions, to be able to flip the field all night. We had five punts inside the twenty, two fifty plus yard punts. He averaged 43. We talk a lot about hidden yardage in our meetings and stuff and Artavis had 128 yards on kick returns. That is huge. Obviously the turnover we got on kickoff coverage with Ammon. Just a great job right there. There were not a lot of opportunities for punt returns. We didn’t field most of them. But on incident where we had the fumble it was great hustle by Mark Fields. That was a huge play in the game, him recovering that ball. One of two on field goal. Then the onside at the end. Jim Brown did a tremendous job all night with the snaps.
Defensively it was a fast start for us. We had four sacks, created three turnovers. The ball was on the ground quite a bit. We got three of them. On third down I thought we were solid. We knew our rush defense, especially in a game like that was going to have to be huge. To hold No. 20 to 50 yards was big. Our defensive front played really well, especially for the first three quarters. Nine tackles for loss and all of that. Especially on the last play of the game, those were all positives.
The biggest disappointment was the fourth quarter. It was 21-3 in the fourth quarter and we gave up 200 plus yards. I don’t know when the last time that has happened. I was just really disappointed in that. We gave us twelve big plays of 16 yards.
The offensive line I can’t say enough good things about them. There were hardly any mental errors. They did a great job and didn’t give up any sacks the whole night.
We are going to put this one behind us and try to get ready for Georgia Tech.
Injury Update
Injury wise we came out of it in good shape. The only guy was Austin Bryant and I think he is going to be okay. We will know more tomorrow but I think he is going to be alright.
We should get Dane Rogers and Chris Register back in practice tomorrow. So we will know more about them in the next couple of days. That is good.
Players of the Game
Offense – Offensive line
Defense – Shaq Lawson and Kevin Dodd
Special Teams – Teasdall and Brown
Question – When did you guys as a program make a change that you would win that type of game winning in the trenches? When did you see that trend start and how have you been so successful?
Dabo – It is just recruiting. We have recruited good players. Personally from a program standpoint I think we made that turn in 2010. We were really good on defense in 2010 and we didn’t have a great season on the scoreboard but I saw the fruits of our labor kind of taking fruit in the program. We lost five games by six points or less. We weren’t very good on offense that year. We lost a lot of playmakers from the year before and were kind of in the process of just establishing our program. But the things that I saw in the locker room and on the practice field I just knew we had a chance to be successful here. And then just going out and recruiting. We recruited a really, really good group. A huge class in 2011 that came in here and that freshmen class went on to be the winningest class in Clemson history. It starts with the players. They have to buy in. You have to be good enough and then you have to develop those guys. To me even though it was the worst season we have had I felt like we were making a turn as a program and then just continuing to be able to recruit at a high level and having a good staff.
Question – Your defensive guys seem to take a lot of pride that they have not dropped off like a lot of people thought they would. That has to be comforting for you to see that those guys have played well early and can still get a whole lot better.
Dabo – There is really nothing that I have seen defensively that I didn’t expect and even talk about in the preseason. We are just not as deep as we have been. Our first group can line up and play with anybody. The difference in our team right now is we have some young talent that is just not quite ready yet to win on an every down basis. We have to grow them up. There is just a big gap between our first and second team in certain spots defensively.
We have to get a little lucky as far as keeping some guys healthy until you can grow some guys up. We have only played four games. We have had two games where we have been able to play a bunch of guys and two games where we have been all in until the last play. So that is going to be a huge part for us moving forward. To be able to develop some more depth, especially on that defensive front seven so that we can have a great run through October and November. The first group and what they are doing right now is not surprising at all.
Probably the biggest surprise to me is how poorly we played in the fourth quarter last night because that is very uncharacteristic. The mistakes that we made from some of our veteran guys on simple things where we just lost our focus. We have to get that corrected.
Question – You weren’t afraid to play the young guys in your offensive groupings. That has to be a nightmare for defensive coordinators looking down the road. How big is that when you have maybe nine or ten different offensive groupings?
Dabo – I think it is big. We try to make a conscious effort to get some of these guys in there that we know are going to have bigger and bigger roles as we go through the season. You are going to continue to see that. They are guys that we trust, especially in certain situations. Some guys we just kind of pick our spots with right now. We have some good young talent and this is a game of playmakers. If you get the ball to guys enough you are going to have a chance to be successful.
Last night, we have had some weird games. Last night we were in a torrential downpour. I was really happy with how we started. We had a great plan of attack and we executed flawlessly and we get up and then your defense is playing great. It is 21-3 in the fourth quarter and you really don’t anticipate them getting 200 plus yards in one quarter. We played it pretty safe and just tried to take care of the ball which we did effectively. Getting those young guys in there is huge. We got some young offensive linemen in there and some receivers. We even got CJ Fuller in there for a play or two. Those are things that will payoff for us as we go through the season.
Question – You move up to No. 6 in the country. I know you don’t think much about the rankings and what they mean now. Do you think your guys will understand that we still have a long way to go?
Dabo – (Laughing) Well I hope so. That is the thing about this stuff. Especially some of the media and the TV people and all that stuff. Everyone just wants to try to end the season like after three games or four games. It is so funny for me to see some of the rhetoric like these teams are in. You forget that you have to go play the games. Every weekend is a season of it’s own. It really is. Just look around college football. I don’t know who was sixth last week but where are they now. I don’t know who was two last week or five but where are they now. You just have to go play the games and that stuff is just irrelevant.
It is great to know that we are in the mix. We certainly wanted to be in October in the conversation. But we have played four games. We haven’t even played half of our season yet so we just need to keep our head down, keep chopping and grind away and just try to find ways to win games. And if we can do that because the goal for us is to win our division and try to get to the championship game and try to have the best season possible. That really has to be our focus and I will be very surprised if it isn’t.
Question – How nice is it to have a guy like MacKensie that you just tell to go shutdown the other teams best receiver and we will worry about the rest of the guys?
Dabo – Well it is comforting to have great players anywhere and he is certainly a great one. He did a lot of good things but he made a lot of mistakes too. We have a lot of coaching that we will be able to do with MacKensie from this tape. There were a lot of fundamental and technique things and some times where he did not do his job. It may have looked like he did his job but he needs to stay within the defense. Shoot you want as many great players as you can have.