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Clemson's Sunday Notes: Dabo Swinney Still has Confidence in Tigers
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney knew two things the Tigers needed to do on the road at Notre Dame on Saturday night to get the win.
The problem is, Clemson didn't do them.
"We needed to win the turnover margin or at least be even and we got to stop the run," Swinney said Sunday night. "It's just that simple. And they only had nine completions. So that type of game that we were going into. Those are two things we needed to do. We didn't do either one of them. Again, they were the more physical team. We had some critical penalties, but the critical play in the game was the blocked punt. We lost the momentum and just didn't respond."
A 35-14 loss was the first of the season for the Tigers (8-1), but Swinney isn't ready to pack it up and call it a lost year. He believes his team will pick up the pieces and finish strong in the last three regular-season games and in the ACC Championship Game.
"We've got to respond and I have confidence," Swinney said. "I know we got good people, we got good players, good coaches and a lot of people who really care. So we just got to recommit to the standard and learn from it, own it.
"I think perspective is huge. We got a group of guys that'll show up and compete. They really care. I know they were really hurting last night and they're going to show up with a mindset tomorrow to get back to work. Nobody wants to lose, but the reality is we got a lot of opportunity in front of us and that's the good thing."
Clemson faces Louisville on Nov. 12 at 3:30 p.m. in Memorial Stadium.
Here's a look at what else Swinney said during his Sunday teleconference:
On quarterbacks DJ Uiagalelei and Cade Klubnik: "I have confidence in both of them and we just really just needed to get a spark and he's certainly gotta get back on track and you know and then obviously Cade made a mistake. We probably put him in a bad spot but just a poor decision there. We want to continue to bring him along and continue to get him some opportunities but DJ is still the guy we believe in.
On offensive struggles being scheme or execution: "It's a combination of a lot of things. We're 8-1. We're better. We're not anywhere near what I want us to be, but we're better in a lot of areas, made improvement from last year. But we're not where we need to be and where we're going to be. We evaluate everything every week, all the time, and always work to get better. I love our players. We've done a lot of good things. We're not 4-4. We're not 5-3 like we were this time last year. We're 8-1 and we'll try to get to 9-1 this week. But nobody is satisfied with any facet of our game right now. So always trying to get better and improve."
On injuries to WR Beaux Collins and DE Xavier Thomas: "Injuries in the game, I had one in Beaux Collins, which y'all saw. He'll definitely be out this week. We'll get a little better evaluation first part of of the week. And then I still don't have total clarification on Xavier Thomas yet. (Doctors) are still kind of consulting on kind of what's the long-term plan for him and what they got to do in the immediate. So other than that you know some guys banked up but we came out of the game and a decent spot I think."
On former Clemson assistant Jeff Scott getting fired as head coach at USF: "I literally just heard that (before the teleconference). I haven't seen anything, so I didn't know anything about it, but definitely, we'll reach out to Jeff and just know he gave it everything he could down there. Just didn't apparently work out. But he's a great coach and a great person and got a great family and somebody I love dearly. He'll grow from it."
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