It’s natural following a big win over a top 10 Notre Dame team for any team to have a letdown the following week.
But it’s not every week that team has to play Georgia Tech.
“If we have a letdown, we are going to get our butts kicked, I’ll tell you that,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said on Tuesday during his weekly press conference.
But Swinney isn’t too worried about having a letdown. Though Georgia Tech is 2-3 and has lost three games, this is the same program that whipped the Tigers last November in Atlanta.
The Yellow Jackets (2-3, 0-2 ACC) held the Tigers to 99 total yards last year after Deshaun Watson went down with his torn ACL. Backup quarterback Cole Stoudt threw two interceptions that were returned for touchdowns, and three overall, which led to 17 Georgia Tech points.
“Turnover margin is critical. If you turn over the ball on these guys you lose and that’s what happened to us last year,” Swinney said. “Their offense didn’t even have to score. The positive is we see them every year. I think our guys are prepared we just have to play well.”
It also helps that Clemson (4-0, 1-0 ACC) has already seen the triple option once this year. The Tigers opened the season against Wofford’s triple option scheme, and held the Terriers strong rushing attack to 123 yards on 45 carries.
But Georgia Tech isn’t Wofford. The Yellow Jackets style of play is tight splits, they cut you, guys arching out, violent, mis-direction all over the field, and quarterback Justin Thomas is in control of it all.
They also like to stretch the field horizontally and vertically that they make opponents create one-on-one matchups. Georgia Tech has scored 12 of its 28 touchdowns in two minutes or less.
“That’s the explosiveness and that’s just because of discipline. You have to be incredibly disciplined when you play option football,” Swinney said. “Paul Johnston came out the womb coaching option football. He has answers.”
And will the Tigers be able to answer him back? Or will there be a letdown.
“I have not really seen that in the fabric of our culture. We have been a very consistent football team regardless,” Swinney said. “We haven’t lost a lot of games but when we come back, we played well. Hopefully we demonstrated consistency, regardless, whether we have had success, whether we have had failure.
“Whenever we have had other big wins around here where we have come back and played well. Our expectation is a one game season. It is a season of its own every single week. You evaluate that season and at the end of that year you have a consensus. That’s just the way we do things.”
And it has worked pretty well. Clemson, who is ranked No. 6 this week in both polls, has not lost to an unranked team since 2011, when they fell at NC State. That’s a steak of 32 consecutive wins.