CLEMSON — Dabo Swinney was very honest about how Clemson’s first scrimmage of fall camp played out Saturday at Memorial Stadium.

“It is probably one of the more competitive scrimmages, honestly, we have had in a while, as far the first scrimmage,” the Tigers’ head coach said afterwards.

No one won the scrimmage. The defense made two big plays early in the scrimmage, but the offense battled back and made their share of big plays, too.

Misun Kelley and Branden Strozier each recorded an interception, with Kelley running his back for a touchdown and Strozier picking his off in the red zone during red zone drills.

Quarterbacks Cade Klubnik and Christopher Vizzina, who combined to throw the two interceptions, bounced back and finished the day strong.

“For whatever the reason, that first scrimmage, sometimes one side has a better day than the other,” Swinney said. “I thought there were moments, from my seat, that I was mad at the offense and I was mad at the defense. Then I would be happy with the offense and then happy with the defense, but then I was pissed, again.

“From my experience, that is usually not a bad thing when you have both sides that really competed. I have been around some where it is just a bad day (for one side) and a lot of times they will rally back the next day. But there were some good and bad on both sides. It was very competitive.”

Swinney said the Tigers got a lot of work in. During the two-hour scrimmage, they got all the red zone work done they wanted to get in, as well as all the “field” parts of the scrimmage, the short-yardage situations, goal line and first-and-goal from the nine situational sets.

“We had a lot of punting competition today. We tried to create as much pressure on those guys as we could,” Swinney said.

Clemson’s head coach said there was some good that came out of the punting competition on Saturday. However, he said he needs them to be “consistently good, not occasionally great.”

“We are getting better. It is a good competition. It is a three-horse race right now,” Swinney said.

The punting competition is between Robert Gunn, III, Jack Smith and Will McCune.

Both Klubnik and Vizzina flashed good things in the scrimmage. The Tigers also did a few sudden-change-situations and had Vizzina go in and work with the first-team offense.

“I thought he did an outstanding job just jumping in their with the ones,” Swinney said. “He had a three-play touchdown drive. He had a couple of big throws. So, it was good on both sides.”