Swinney's Tigers Are Not Defending Anything

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney made one thing very clear to his team—they were not defending anything.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney made one thing very clear to his team—they were not defending anything.

Which is a strange statement to make, seeing as only two months prior the Tigers claimed their second national championship in the last three seasons, making them the defending national champions. But for Swinney, the word defending brought with it a sense of complacency.

“Everything coming into the spring was, Oh, man, you won a national championship, how do you stay focused? We had checked the box, so now we're going to quit working at Clemson,” Swinney said. “What else? We're going to go lay on the beach or something.

“People don't realize, we got a bunch of motivated individuals. What we accomplished is something that's really motivating to go do it again.”

Swinney, instead chose another word to when asked about how his 2019 team would handle be the “defending national champions”—attack.

He said that the 2019 Clemson football team were not defending anything, instead they were attacking another championship. Now, after securing their fourth straight ACC Championship and a fourth straight berth in the College Football Playoff, Swinney is not changing his tune—his Tigers are still on the hunt.

“No, we're the attacking champs. We're attacking for another one,” Swinney said. “That's been our mindset all year. We're not defending anything. I mean, like I said earlier in the year, if we had the same team back, but we've got a different team. We're attacking to try to go win another one.”