Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney held his weekly teleconference Sunday to review the win over Georgia Tech and look ahead to Boston College. Coach Swinney couldn’t have been happier with the defensive performance Saturday against the Jackets.
A transcript of the teleconference follows:
Opening Statement
Again I am just proud of our guys. There is not much more to add from last night. It is always great to win but when you put all three phases together like we did and really have a dominant performance those type of games are really fun to be a part of, especially against an opponent like Georgia Tech. They are a big challenge every single year.
I am just really proud of our guys for getting themselves ready to go and playing for four quarters. That is what we wanted to see. We wanted to see our team get on top and put them away and we were able to do that.
Offensively I was really, really pleased with the balance and our ability to run the football. Four out of five games two hundred plus rushing yards. What we are seeing with Wayne Gallman. The identity we are creating up front on the offensive line. We averaged almost five yards per carry. This was a game where we really had the opportunity to get the passing game going. We threw the ball for 326 yards and the best part of it was the explosiveness that we pride ourselves on was there. We had a ton of big plays. I think we had about ten plays of 16 yards or more. I think we had about seven different guys contribute to that. It was a really, really fun game to be part of offensively. We were in a great rhythm. On third down we were 10-16. We only punted three times and when you play Georgia Tech you have to be very efficient with your possessions. Deshaun Watson was seventy percent, 21-30. A couple of things in particular. The two minute drive right before the half. Those were three big conversions. The touchdown to Leggett was a huge momentum play in the game. And then at the end of the game we took off 8 minutes and 30 seconds on that last drive with Nick Schuessler. Nick did a great job. We had a drive of 13 plays. We had three third downs that we converted and we went 94 yards there.
A complete game offensively. Still a lot of things we can improve on and get better at.
You just can’t say enough about the defense. You are playing a team that usually goes for about 300 something rushing and is usually one of the top five in the nation. To hold them to 71 yards rushing is just incredible. We held the quarterback to five yards. He is just a dynamic player. Our defense was dialed in and played with great precision. That was the lowest amount of mental errors we have had all year. It is the lowest amount of missed tackles we have had all year. That is one of the keys to being able to beat a team like that. Tackling is at a premium and you can’t have a lot of mental errors. They don’t punt the ball much and they punted eight times. If you go back and track them they probably haven’t punted eight times in their past five games. Tremendous job by our defense. Some big plays. I thought that we handled the adversity in the game. We got the fumble and they went out and held them to a field goal. We had the pick and they went three and out. It is good to see them respond to the adversity. We had a lot of great efforts by a lot of guys. We had a lot of tackles for loss and just dominated the line of scrimmage.
The biggest negatives where the busted big plays. We just had a miscommunication on one. A corner thought we were clouding it and we just didn’t quite get the call and they got behind us. We had our eyes on the wrong thing on the first big play. Those are things that we can correct. Overall a dominant performance defensively. As good as I’ve seen.
Our special teams again showed up big time. Last week we created a fumble on kickoff coverage. This week we got a safety on a punt return. Teasdall averaged 45 yards per punt. That is two weeks in a row he has just been tremendous. Our kickoff coverage was very, very good. We made a couple of field goals. Seth Ryan did a great job getting the ball down two weeks in a row now in wet weather.
Again a lot of positives but we still haven’t played our best football.
Players of the Game
Defense – Kearse, Boulware, O’Daniel
Offense – Leggett
Special Teams – Seth Ryan
Injury Update
In a game like that we have several guys that got dinged and banged up. Ryan Carter was the main guy. He went out with the hammy. He will be in yellow tomorrow. We will reevaluate him on Tuesday. Ryan Norton and Austin Bryant our plan is to have them back for the Miami game. Both of those guys we will ramp it up even more with them this week. But both will be out this week as of right now.
Question – Are you hoping for rain again this Saturday?
Dabo – Yeah, I think the bad news is it is supposed to be sunny on Saturday. I don’t know. I don’t know if I am the only one on this call battling a cold. Maybe it is two weeks in a row of standing in the rain for about eight hours. I tell you I am really proud of our football team for showing up and being ready and executing in the elements. That is just part of it. Those are just things you don’t control so we don’t spend a lot of time worry about it. Snaps have been good. Ball handling has been good. We have taken care of the ball.
Question – We saw more of Zac Brooks yesterday. Has anyone established themselves as the guy behind Gallman?
Dabo – I think he has kind of shown some things the last couple of weeks. The biggest things is he had just gotten back healthy. He missed just about all of camp. He came back right before the first game. He had been kind of gaining confidence and I thing Tony has been gaining confidence in him as well. He definitely got a little more action yesterday. He did a good job. Right now he is definitely the first guy in.
It is hard to play five. We have confidence in all of them. We feel good about where we are right now with Wayne. We are kind of feeding him. Zac is the next man up. But all of those guys we feel like can win for us and will win for us before this year is out.
Question – One last question. You had a conversation with an ESPN reporter yesterday about Clemsoning. You kind of put that to bed a long time ago on the field. It’s now been about 24 hours. Did it feel good to be able to address that publicly?
Dabo – No, I don’t have any more to say about all that stuff. I am not getting into any of that stuff anymore. It is ridiculous as you know. We are just going to keep doing what we do. We are just trying to win football games and graduate our players. That is all we are going to do. We are going to let everybody else push whatever agendas they want to.