During an appearance Wednesday on WCCP 105.5 FM The Roar, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney noted that the 3-2 Tigers need to put a complete game together, starting this week.

Discussing the mentality heading into Saturday’s game vs. Charleston Southern, Swinney said the Tigers “need to dominate somebody.”

Swinney says dominance comes from full-unit execution — having all 11 players execute their assignments on a given play. Swinney pointed out that “too many times” this season, it has only been nine or 10 players doing their job correctly.

“We need to get better. We need to dominate somebody. And the way you do that is you get 11 guys doing the job,” Swinney said. “And we have too many times with this season where it’s nine guys, it’s 10 guys. … Like, when I grade stuff, like, when it’s a check, check, check. But it’s like every play, it takes me forever to grade because every play, it seems like we’ve got a mistake or we’ve got an issue. And so, we’ve got to take all of the stuff because we’ve had five games — and we’ve got a lot of guys that have gotten some experience and things like that – and obviously, we’ve got a young quarterback.

“So, there’s going to be some mistakes, but we can’t make the same mistakes. And we have to apply — wisdom is the application of knowledge. So, we’ve learned a lot in five games. Well, let’s be a wiser, more disciplined team that doesn’t lose to Clemson.”

Swinney added that his team is “right there” and “so close, but close don’t get it done.”

Swinney also brought up the fact that miscues on routine things are costing the Tigers, using Clemson’s most recent game before the bye week – a 41-13 loss to Miami on Oct. 3 – as a prime example of that.

“We’ve got to go win. You can’t sit around and wait on them to miss the putt,” Swinney said. “And we’re missing one-footers. We’re making some 25-footers, but we’re missing the one-footers, and that’s where we’ve got to get better. We’re making some easy stuff really hard. We’re making some hard stuff look easy. And we’ve got to fix that. And it’s just routine stuff, but those things add up quickly, because now you’re punting instead of the drive extending.

“You can’t control the refs. You can’t control the opponent and different things. But that drive before the half and the opening drive in the third quarter should have been scoring drives, and that’s a different ball game [vs. Miami]. And that’s where we’ve got to get out of our own way is to win those type of games. And so I want to see us really grow from that. And I have seen that. I mean, the guys are battling. We’re figuring personnel out.”

Swinney expects Clemson to play its best game of the 2026 campaign on Saturday when FCS opponent Charleston Southern (3-3) comes to Memorial Stadium.

Kickoff is set for 12 p.m. on ACC Network. The Tigers head into the matchup as a massive 42.5-point favorite.

“We’re going to get better. And my expectation is, we play our best game of the [season] this week,” Swinney said. “We’ve got five conference games left, and there’s a lot on the line, and we’ve got to play our best football down the stretch.”