Clemson's national title hopes dashed but Stellato says, 'We have a lot to play for'

On being healthy and finally having the knee brace off: "I've been here two years now and I've always battled through injuries. I was wearing the brace up to the second game and just getting that off and playing free and not having that worry about my knee or anything. It's great. So, it's super encouraging. I'm just super happy to be back out there and making plays and hopefully contributing."

On how he remained positive while dealing with injuries: "I just put my trust into my lord Savior too and my family. I have a great support staff and I knew once I could get over this hurdle of injuries everything would go smooth because I really put the work in to get back on the field. I trust in my abilities and what got me here. I always knew I could help this team it was about staying available. But If I can stay healthy, where I know I can, I don't think I can really be stopped, to be honest."

On shifting from the dream of playing for a national championship: "We have a lot to play for. We're Clemson at the end of the day. So it's kind of unfortunate how the season [has] gone so far. It's just a little one or two plays away from being 4-0. We all know that. I really believe we're the best team in the country. It's just a couple of plays didn't really go our way. We want another 10-win season. I think we still got a shot at an ACC championship. So we're just going to take it week by week. I mean we got Syracuse this week and we're prepared for that game. We're not really looking too far ahead. But just get a win this week, get back in the win column, and just keep putting our foot forward. We're a really tough competitive group and we're not going to let how the season started really dictate our season."

On how his family supported him during the tough times: "They never stopped believing in me. My parents are the best people ever. They want me to succeed in football but they care as their son first and just how I was feeling with the whole thing and they’re a great support staff. I talk to my parents all the time and they feed me so many words of encouragement and they honestly made the situation better for sure. My dad's been my biggest supporter in football and everything. So, we both knew what would happen once I got back out there and [he] just told me to keep pushing -- you can't look in the past, you can't dwell on it. So just a lot of words of encouragement, from my family and I never lost confidence in myself or anything."

On being a Florida native and facing Florida State: "A lot of my buddies go to Florida State from where I'm from. I knew a good amount of people so [I] got a lot of texts. I mean a lot of people rooting for me, but they weren't rooting for us. But yeah, it sucked. They were good sports about it. I felt like they understood so it wasn't the best for sure."