This time last week, sixth-ranked Clemson’s plan to attack Notre Dame was to throw the football. Of course with Hurricane Joaquin approaching the east coast and talk of rain fall reaching record levels in the Clemson area, the Tigers’ coaches changed that plan.

“As I told our players, it’s time to call in the Air Force and it is time to get those planes flying,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said on his weekly call-in show Monday night. “As it turned out, we had to call in the Navy because it was a whole different deal. We were Navy, Marines and Army out there, boots on the ground, trying to grind this thing out.”

Clemson (4-0, 1-0 ACC) finished the game with 212 rushing yards and averaged nearly five yards per carry (4.93) against a defensive front many called one of the best in college football. Running back Wayne Gallman led the way with 111 of those yards, with quarterback Deshaun Watson rushing for 93 yards.

Watson opened the game with a 38-yard run—the longest of his career—and in the third quarter he had a 21-yard touchdown run that gave the Tigers a 21-3 lead at the time. Gallman broke off a 33-yard run in the fourth quarter to set up a Greg Huegel 35-yard field goal.

“We ran the football for 212 yards and nobody in the country would have predicted that,” Swinney said. “I mean nobody. We are up 21-3 in the fourth quarter, in a hurricane.”

Swinney said it was laughable for media and fans to sit around and think the Tigers sat on the football in the fourth quarter. He said they did not alter anything.

“The bottom line is you have a game plan, but you also have to pay attention to what is happening in the game,” Swinney said to a caller. “We just don’t call things to call things. You have to see … what’s the flow of the game? What is happening out there on the field? Certainly, the conditions had a huge part in the way the game was called.”

Heading into the fourth quarter with a 21-3 lead and knowing the way his defense was playing through three quarters, Swinney said they did not want to do anything stupid that could change the momentum of the game.

He recalled a pass over the middle earlier in the game to wide receiver Deon Cain that the freshman tipped in the air. The ball fell incomplete, but it brought to the Tigers’ attention they could not throw those kinds of passes the rest of the night because it would be too risky.

“We are going to have to take a couple of shots, but we are going to be selective,” Swinney said. “They’re going to be outside plays and we are going to try and make some one-on-one plays. But we ran the football against seven, eight and nine man boxes and we were effective. I cannot say enough about our offensive line, our quarterback and Wayne.”

Clemson did take three long shots after the play to Caine. First they went deep to Artavis Scott, who dropped a touchdown pass, and then then went deep to Hunter Renfro, where they drew a pass interference penalty. After the interference penalty, they went deep one more time, but Charone Peake did not go up and fight for the football and it was intercepted.

After that the Tigers went to their ground-and-pound game, and rushed for 51 yards in the fourth quarter. One more yard than Notre Dame leading rusher C.J. Prosise had the entire game. He came into the night with 600 yards through the first four weeks of the season, the most in Notre Dame history for a running back.

“We are up 21-3 and those guys have hardly got a first down on our defense. If we are out there slinging it all across the middle of the field and they are getting pick sixs and they’re back in the game, then (those fans and media) will be the same ones talking about, ‘Why didn’t we run the ball? Why are you throwing the ball?’”

Besides missing on three plays in the second half that could have put the game away, including Huegel’s missed field goal with 4:29 to play. Swinney’s biggest disappointment came on the defensive side of the ball.

Through the first three quarters, Clemson held Notre Dame to 212 total yards and the Irish had just 11 first downs. In the fourth quarter, DeShone Kizer threw for 202 yards alone, including two touchdown passes. Notre Dame finished the game with 437 total yards.

“What I didn’t count on was our defense completing losing their mind in the fourth quarter,” Swinney said. “That’s as bad of defense I have seen us play in a long time. It was not a really good meeting (Monday) morning. It’s not like they were making competitive plays. We absolutely really went bonkers.

“We made mistakes we just haven’t made, just basic things. We dropped eight, and we had guys playing man coverage when they should have been playing zone coverage. We had the same thing on the rub play that was really just a missed assignment.  Guys were going in the wrong gap. Again, it’s not like they threw the ball down the field and they made a bunch of competitive plays.

“We had three chances to put it away offensively, and we did not do it, but at the same time, we had a 21-3 lead with a defense that had not given up a first down.”