During his weekly Tuesday press conference, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney called the 1-3 start to this season an “absolute coaching failure.”

Clemson offensive line coach Matt Luke met with the media Wednesday and said Swinney’s assessment is “very fair.”

“When you come to Clemson, you expect to win championships, and when you don’t win, there’s accountability that goes with that,” Luke said. “When you’re hired as a coach, you’re coming in expecting to win. So when you don’t, there’s accountability. There’s collective accountability.”

Swinney said Tuesday that Clemson’s players also have their share of accountability for how this season has gone so far, but “when players don’t play to their potential, to me, that’s on coaches” – and Swinney said it starts with himself.

While Swinney said he’s “not pointing the finger” at others but instead “pointing the thumb” at himself, Luke says, “I don’t think you point the finger at any one person – we’re all in this thing together.”

“I think Coach Swinney has done an unbelievable job, during a tough time, just accountability and leadership as coaches. Because it starts with us,” Luke added.

Luke – who joined Clemson in December 2023 with more than 20 years of experience as an offensive line coach, co-offensive coordinator and head coach, including three years as head coach at Ole Miss from 2017-19 – says “as a coach, you have a vision of the way you want to look when you step on the field,” and it’s the responsibility of the coaches to make that vision a reality for the players on the field.

“If the vision doesn’t look the way you want to look, it is a failure,” he said. “So, that’s our job as coaches, to get our players playing and make that vision come to life on the field. When you put the Paw on your helmet, there’s a certain way it’s supposed to look. And to me, as a coach, you take a lot of pride in trying to make it look that way, and that’s our job.”