Tigers Focused on Changing the Rhetoric
Despite crushing the Louisville Cardinals by 35 points, improving to 7-0 on the season and 5-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Clemson Tigers again fell in the national ranking, dropping from No. 3 to No. 4, perhaps giving more fuel to the argument that the ACC is a weak conference and is hurting Clemson’s case for being the top team in the nation.
The Tigers recently dispatched a trio of ACC foes, including the Cardinals (45-10) on Saturday in Kentucky, the Florida State Seminoles (45-14) two weeks ago and the UNC Tar Heels (21-20) before the bye week break.
Co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach Jeff Scott said he thought the ACC was a strong league, and Clemson winning the national title has helped to change the perception about the conference.
“I think it bothered us (coaches) a little bit,” Scott said when asked about criticism related to the ACC versus the SEC and other conferences. “And Coach (Dabo) Swinney said, ‘Hey, we're going to have to be the ones to change the rhetoric.’ And I think winning two out of the last three (years), we've kind of changed that to a certain extent.
“But, outside of about eight or 10 teams, I feel like the next 11 through 50 (teams in the nation) are all about the same. They're good players and good coaches, and they're good enough to beat you if you don't come out and play up to your standards. So, I really don't get caught up in that. I feel like our league every year, you go back and look at the bowl games and all that stuff, it stands up for itself.”
Scott said he and his fellow coaches feel like they are part of a competitive league in which any team can beat any other team on any given Saturday, noting that UNC was in a position to win the game against Clemson a few weeks ago, and Louisville could have made its game more competitive if events had panned out differently.
“This game against Louisville, there's a couple of chances we could have let that be a lot closer game,” Scott said. “And who knows, what gets in the second half where that would go. So, I don't feel like we have to apologize to anybody for the league that we're in. And we still got some big games left in our schedule to be able to accomplish the goals that we have ahead of us.”
Scott said the key now for the Tigers is to “keep that edge” and stay in a winning mindset regardless of where they are ranked.
“Coach Swinney can find a way when you're the number one team to have fun and keep that edge,” Scott said. “And it's important because when you've won as many games as we've won, you got to fight human nature, which is to kind of relax and think it's just going to happen. And so, I think that's the kind of art of coaching is to always find a way.”
He said criticisms about Clemson’s strength of schedule or the national rankings are just distractions to what happens in the video room and on the practice field leading up to game day.
“Most of the time, it's (the key is) really just reminding our guys what really matters is, what we think, what we know (and) what we see on video,” Scott said. “And hey, nobody's saying that we haven't screwed up or we don't have things to correct. We do. We've got to get better to go where we want to go.
“But, the outside noise, whether it's good or bad, at this point is just a distraction. And you know, we're kind of coming into that second half of that season when we got to really be locked in and stay focused.”
