On Saturday, former Clemson star edge rusher Shaq Lawson took to social media and called out the Tigers after their 24-21 loss at Georgia Tech.

Lawson — a former All-ACC and All-American edge rusher who played at Clemson from 2013-15 — was openly critical of the Tigers’ current roster, writing on X (formerly Twitter), “We don’t got no dawgs at Clemson. That NIL change everything.”

During Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney’s weekly teleconference Sunday evening, he was asked about Lawson’s social media post questioning the toughness of this year’s team.

“I mean, listen, everybody’s entitled to whatever opinion they want,” Swinney said. “I mean, he certainly is a guy I’ve got a ton of respect for. I mean, like I said, we gotta be better. That’s just the bottom line. We’ve gotta be better. We’ve gotta be tougher to make one more play. Again, as poorly as we played offensively against LSU, it still comes down to the last play. And then certainly this past game was one play.”

“We gotta be better everywhere,” Swinney added. “Not just players — coaches, all of us.”

Swinney knows the criticism comes with the territory.

“That just comes with it,” he said. “When you’re at Clemson and you don’t get the results that we all work for, that’s just part of it. So, I understand that frustration. People care about this program, I care about this program, but I also have a lot of perspective. I do know there’s perception and there’s also reality, and hey, we’re 1-2. But not every 1-2 is the same, that’s for dang sure. But we’re going to battle our butts off.”

Added Swinney of the criticism: “You’ve got to just stay away from all that stuff and focus on doing the work, and we’ve gotta get better at doing that.”