Dabo Swinney: First of all, man, I just want to thank our fans. What an awesome, awesome environment that was. It was special. We had so many former players here, too. It was great to see a lot of those guys. And, certainly disappointed that we didn’t get it done for them. But, man, the crowd was awesome. The environment was awesome. A beautiful night. And it was a heavyweight fight. Listen, that’s—that was just as simple as that, just a heavyweight fight as far as a football game. And, just a couple plays. They made a couple more plays than we did. And we made a couple more critical errors than they did. And in games like that, that’s usually the difference.
But there were a lot of positives in the game. First of all, defensively, we were tough. We were tough. We were physical. Outside of the first run, the last 58 minutes, I think they averaged 2.8 a carry. I really thought we did a lot of great things defensively that we can build on. Just too many costly penalties. We win the turnover margin. We got the lead at half. It’s tied in the fourth quarter. And, just the third and—I don’t know what it was, third and 11 or 12 or whatever. And those are plays that can haunt you. And we don’t get off the field there, and they go on and get a score. We rough the quarterback, and they go on and get a score on that drive.
And we had plenty of—but I will say this, our defense responded after that. They got a couple of big stops, gave it back to the offense with a chance to go tie the ball game, and just didn’t quite get it done offensively.
Offensively, we lost Antonio in the first series. So, that was certainly disappointing there. But, plenty of opportunities. And we just—we missed our opportunities. I thought we got away from the run too early. We didn’t run the ball effectively at all. That’s something we’ll have to improve on. But there were plays there. We had a couple of big drops and a couple—we missed opportunities. Same thing I’ll say about the offense. They played—they fought to the last play. I didn’t think we handled their pressures very well. Nowhere near close to what we’re capable of offensively. And, I mean, nowhere near. We are much more capable than that. And the guys will be disappointed when they see some of the missed opportunities on tape. But, again, you have to give LSU credit because they made a couple of those critical plays. Again, that’s the difference in a game like this in the fourth quarter. So, congratulations to them.
A lot of positives. I thought there were some really huge plays made. We had a couple great plays by our tight ends. We had a couple great plays outside. It was good to get Tyler Brown back out there. And had some nice key plays for us as well. But—and then I thought special teams. We had a big punt return at the end of the game to set up a short field and a chance to go tie the ball game. We had every opportunity right there and just, again, didn’t quite get it done. And I thought Jack Smith did a nice job. For his first time in an environment like that, he had one big punt backed up. And then he had another big one late there in the game. So, I was proud of him.
So, disappointed. Regardless of what would happen in this game, you win or lose the game, we’ve got to go win next week. Nothing’s changed as far as when it comes to that. So our focus is, now that we’ve—now we’ve played a game. We just spent three weeks plus in a camp. Now we’ve played a game, a hard-fought game. And there are a lot of good things on tape. And then there’s a lot we can learn from. And we got to grow from it. And I don’t have any doubt. I really believe this is going to be one heck of a football team when it’s all said and done. I really do. I think this is going to be a really good team.
Disappointed in the outcome tonight, but the focus will be to just learn and grow from it. We got to go win next week. We got another opportunity next week. A long season ahead. We’ve got to be resilient and lock in and focus on what we control. Learning from this, having a good Monday practice, and trying to get on track next week and start getting some W’s.
