Dabo Swinney commented on officiating Monday night during his weekly radio show.

Clemson’s head coach was asked about the roughing the passer penalty against linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr. in the third quarter of last Saturday’s 17-12 win over Wake Forest, which was called on third-and-14 and gave the Demon Deacons a first down on a drive that eventually resulted in a field goal that trimmed their deficit to 10-6.

Swinney said Clemson sent the play in to the ACC for review.

“A tough call,” Swinney said. “I don’t know what you tell your linebacker… They made the call, but it is what it is.”

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney argues after a call against the Tigers during the third quarter Saturday, October 7, 2023 at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium. Bart Boatwright/The Clemson Insider

Swinney also spoke about the sequence in the first quarter on Wake Forest’s opening drive, when quarterback Mitch Griffis was ultimately flagged for an illegal forward pass after further review showed he went beyond the line of scrimmage and threw the forward pass.

Prior to that play being reviewed, Wake Forest was able to run another play, which resulted in a false start. Moments later, the game was stopped to review Griffis’ pass, which was initially ruled on the field as a legal backward pass.

“Just like the play that, I mean, we thought the quarterback was across the line of scrimmage and a forward pass, and they ran another play and it was a penalty, and then they come back and they reviewed the play before the play,” Swinney said. “So, there’s some challenging things that come. Because my comment was OK, if they had thrown a touchdown pass, would we have called that off? Because the ball was snapped.”

Swinney added “there’s a process,” and he really likes the ACC’s Supervisor of Football Officials, Al Riveron.

“He’s sharp,” Swinney said. “I think he really wants to be great, and he tries to hold everybody accountable and coach them, just like we try to coach our players.”

With that said, Swinney wasn’t happy with a couple of calls in the Wake Forest game.

“Certainly nobody’s perfect, but there’s definitely a couple that I disagreed with for sure,” he said. “But we’ll keep moving forward. Thankful we were able to win the game.”

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