Clemson Tigers HC Dabo Swinney Optimistic on Offense's Production Following LSU Loss

On Tuesday, the media was able to hear from Clemson Tigers’ head coach Dabo Swinney in person for the first time since the LSU loss last weekend.

The Clemson head coach was quick to remark that it is only Week 1, which tends to see problems arise early, especially against a top 10 opponent like the Tigers did with LSU at home.

Unlike a game that was against either an FBS school or a lower-tier school just to bring a beatdown, Swinney isn’t upset with playing a top opponent earlier, saying that he has “more confirmation than doubt” about his squad now.

“I’ve got a lot of confirmation on who our football team is, and I’d rather have this feeling in this situation than if we’d won 50-3 against somebody,” he said on Tuesday. “I got a lot more confirmation on who our team is and what they’re going to be. Not what they can be, but what they’re going to be.”

Optimistically, Swinney said that one of the problems was with quarterback Cade Klubnik, and with the senior beginning his third season as Clemson’s signal caller, the team knows the potential that he has, showing it over the last two seasons to be remarked as one of the best returning starters this season.

Swinney believes that Klubnik will respond well in the upcoming weeks.

“The biggest issue in that game was our best player didn’t play well, and if that’s the biggest issue coming out of that game, sign me up for that,” he said. “Because 2 will respond, [I] promise you, so we all watched the tape and talked about how we all get better this week. A lot of good things, but not good enough to win the game, and it all came down to the last shot, and we didn’t make it.”

It wasn’t anything major that Klubnik missed; it was the little mistakes that Swinney fundamentally echoes throughout his program. The Clemson head coach didn’t blame him in the locker room.

Klubnik, known for being a hard critic, knows what he has to do going forward, according to Swinney.

“Basic, not complicated,” he said. “Simple reads, simple progression, holding the ball, running out of pockets, he just didn’t play well. I didn’t have to talk to him; he already knew. He knows the game; he just went right back to work, so that’s what he’ll do. He will respond, he will bounce back.”

Another topic of interest was the run game, which was unable to get going and left the team one-dimensional, especially in the second half.

Swinney thought that the team didn’t take opportunities with its tailbacks to get a rhythm going on the ground. However, again, he relates back to the idea of it being the first game, and things will be ironed out over the course of the year.

“We didn’t even try on the run game,” the Clemson head coach said. “We didn’t even give it a chance. So, things we’ve got to do better as coaches, again, it’s an opener, and it’s how you get better. Things get exposed early; rather than game eight, it’s right out of the gate. You don’t forget that, so I’d much rather have that.”

A lot of it came down to the time of possession, which the Tigers had 22:50 of the ball compared to LSU’s 37:10. At that point, desperate times mean throwing the ball, which Swinney acknowledged.

“I just knew we weren’t in rhythm,” he said. “And then, all of a sudden, we started pressing a little bit because of the time of possession. You just feel like you don’t have the ball, and you feel like the clock’s just gone. . .22 minutes is not a lot of time.”

Fortunately, the team has a chance to continue to iron out the kinks against Troy this weekend at home, which will look to get back Klubnik and the rest of the offense into last season's form.

The Clemson defense did its job, holding LSU to 17 points and looking promising. Now, it will be the offense that decides the ceiling of the team, which Swinney believes will bounce back.

“[LSU’s] offense wasn’t great, but it was a little better than ours, and that was the difference in the game,” he said. “So, we’ve got to clean some things up, we need to grow our team, we need to really develop and take a really big jump forward in this game.

You've got to make the plays that are there. Easy stuff, nothing complicated, just we didn’t do the routine stuff well.”