When Dabo Swinney was asked if Clemson beat Pittsburgh would they have still won the national championship, the Tigers head coached responded comically, “Yeah, because we would be 15-0, instead of 14-1.”

In all seriousness, though, Swinney said the Tigers would have won the only game they lost had they just took care of the football better and stopped the shovel pass. Clemson turned the ball over three times on that November afternoon, all in the red zone, while the Panthers used the shovel pass eight times for nearly half of their 308 passing yards and three touchdowns.

“Every team we saw after that ran that shovel pass,” he said. “I wish you could have been on the headsets. Coach V (Brent Venables) would be like, ‘Yeah! Run it again!’ It was awesome. But we would not see it many more times.”

As for the turnovers, the Tigers took care of that, too. Clemson had just seven turnovers in its remaining five games on its way to winning the national championship.

In the last five games, Clemson beat Wake 35-13, blew out South Carolina 56-7, hung on to beat Virginia Tech in the ACC Championship Game 42-35, dominated Ohio State 31-0 in the Fiesta Bowl and then rallied in the final second to beat Alabama 35-31 in the National Championship Game.

“We did not learn anything that we already did not know, except we had to fix some things defensively that we did not do a good job of because we could not stop (Pitt),” Swinney said. “Offensively, we had 630 yards of offense, but it does not matter how many yards of offense you have. We needed one more point. We had opportunities where we did not finish in the red zone. We had turnovers.

“You just move on. It is really that simple. Those guys were hungry all year long. I think that game certainly, I think, was an eye opener that you have to get those little things done. But as far as changing how we practiced and guys being focused, it was all good, all year long. All year long it was good.”

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