AUSTIN, Texas – Clemson’s football season came to an end Saturday night at Royal Texas Stadium in Austin, Texas, and it was obvious as to why.

The Tigers’ defense, which used to be one of the nation’s best, allowed 494 yards and gave up big play after big play in Texas’ 38-24 victory in the first round of the College Football Playoff.

The Longhorns (12-2) ran for 292 yards overall. However, 216 of those yards came on explosive plays, including runs of 22, 38, 16, 19, 77 and 21 yards.

Texas also had passes of 43, 21, 19 and 16 yards. The Longhorns finished the game with 12 explosive plays. Their offensive production was a microcosm of Clemson’s season on defense.

Now the question is what will the Tigers do about their defense in the off-season? It’s no secret there need to be changes.

“We’re not worried about any of that stuff,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said. “We had a great year, won the championship. Got to improve in all areas. Got an excellent staff.

“All those guys work really hard and well together, but we’ve got to improve everywhere. If we want to get to the top. Good enough to get to the playoff, good enough to win the league, not good enough to win it all.”

Defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin says they have a lot of self-scouting to do but would not comment on if there would be any changes to his defensive staff.

“In January, we’ll do our end of the year self-scout review and look at all the issues and problems and how teams attacked us throughout the year,” he said. “You can just see kind of the trends and stuff, and so forth and so on. That’s kind of the next step.

“Obviously, no recruiting up until the middle of January before we can get out. So just assess all of that with the staff, cut-ups by coverages, fronts, personnel groupings, so forth and so on, and just give a thorough evaluation. Then lay out the plan for February and just how we get better and attack that plan.”

As for his own experience and what he learned in Year 3 as the Tigers’ defensive coordinator, he says it is definitely a year in which he has learned a lot.

“Yeah, every year is a life of its own. Each team is different. Just an unbelievable experience with these guys each and every day, and just showing up,” he said. “It was a lot of fun, a lot of tough days, but just an unbelievable experience and learned a ton. And super proud of these guys.”