Notes from Dabo Swinney after NC State

Here are some notes from Dabo Swinney’s postgame press conference after Clemson’s 55-10 win over NC State:

“We were ready. We had a great week of practice. This has been a difficult place to come and play. The crowd does an amazing job here. It’s a great environment. Our guys were locked in and just really ready to play. Our execution was tremendous in that first half. We really played about as clean as you could play. We didn’t make many mistakes. We probably dropped two touchdown passes in that first half. We lined up offsides on third-and-three one time, had a penality on the punt return. Other than that, we really played a very, very clean game. Trevor, man, he was tremendous. He set a Clemson record - five weeks in a row with three touchdown passes or more. Never been done. Travis Etienne, that’s his fifth game in a row for 100 yards or more. That ties a record. Our defense to hold them - that’s 10 in a row to less than 300 yards. Super proud of that. The four turnovers were huge. The two early gave us two short fields and we were really able to capitalize and kind of put the game away.

Just really proud of our guys. Second half we got a little sloppy. Had a couple offsides. We subbed a lot of guys, got most everybody in there. They made a few good plays on us. Just really proud of these guys. It’s hard to make history. It’s hard to do things that have never been done, especially with some of these teams that we’ve had over the last few years. This team just contiunes to separate itself and live its own legacy, if you will

This is our fifth division in a row and I think eight out of 11 years. To have the opportunity to go back to Charlotte and represent the Atlantic, that’s one of our goals every year. We got a chance to - if we can win that game - it’ll be five championships in a row, which has never been done. This team’s got a lot of great opportunity in front of them. 10-0 for the fifth time in school history. A lot of great things that this team has been able to accomplish. Really proud of these seniors. We got an unbelievable group. Great chemistry, tremendous leadership. Tonight was a reflection of all that stuff. Had a great week of practice. It worked out, obviously, with Wake losing that we had the opportunity to clinch it tonight.

Thought  process on trying to punch the ball in on final possession?

“We were just trying to let them play. We certainly could have and they could have stopped us, too. But they didn’t. We just tried to hand the ball off and run a couple plays. Let Chase Brice play - let all those guys play. We subbed everybody. There wasn’t a whole lot else to put in there. Just letting those guys play ball.”

On Skalski kicking a PAT:

“He’s actually a good kicker. Everybody thinks it’s easier than it looks. He don’t miss them in practice, but all of a sudden he got a little stage fright out there tonight. It’s been something. He’s been our emergency guy for a while. We jut hadn’t had an opportunity to throw him out there. Unfortunate he missed it.”

On John Simpson scoring:

“It was awesome. That really came about because Xavier Thomas got hurt. He was kind of our heavy package guy. With him being out those three weeks, we’ve been working John a little bit. It worked out. Right situation where we got the ball on the one. Probably wouldn’t have been able to run it much further than that. It was awesome. 

He has been playing football for a long time, his entire life, and he’s never scored a touchdown. He’s always been the big guy on the line. Always too heavy to run the ball. That was a cool moment. Something we’ve had in the last three or four weeks.

On orange pants:

“Well, I said we weren’t going to wear them. I didn’t say we weren’t going to bring them.

We just packed a separate case. I just told Abe (Reed, equipment director), ‘who knows what is going to happen in that game? If (Wake Forest) gets beat, do we have enough time to change pants?’ He thought we did so we found out that Wake had gotten beat before we went out for Pregame. During pregame, they put them out on everyone’s locker. The guys were fired up. They love those orange pants.”

On Trevor running the ball early:

“Just the way it worked out. One of them was when he was throwing a screen, but he just made something out of nothing. He forgot he was supposed to hand it off. He used his back and got some positive yards. Some of them were called plays and he had a couple scrambels. He’s run well all year. He’s been tremendous. The touchdown run was a zone read.”

On consistency and winning 10 games for 9th straight year:

“I think that’s the third-longest streak in football history. Or ties the third-longest streak in football history. Fourteen, Florida State, is the longest. Then Alabama is next. It’s hard to do. That’s why there aren’t very many teams that have done that. That’s what we really care about more than anything is consistency. That’s why winning the national championship is not a goal for us. It’s a byproduct. It can happen, but sometimes there are things you don’t control with that. Maybe there are some key guys hurt pr whatever. That doens’t mean your guys aren’t as committed. Sometimes, you just aren’t good enough to win anational championship. It doesn’t mean that you had a bad year or whatever. Only one team is going to do that. I want to measure our team on our consistency year-in and year-out, our commitment in the offseason, the chemistry, the leadership, graduation. That’s what we’ve done. Eight out of 10 years, we’ve been top 10 accademically. We’ve had nine 10+ win seasons and eight out of the last nine years, we’ve been top ten academically, too. That’s the consistency that we want to have. Just super proud of this team and all those teams before that gave us the opportunity to continue that. It’s something that everybody who wears that paw takes pride. Hopefully, we can do it again next year. We want to win them all. But you can’t win 12 until you win 11.

“You gotta do things over a long period of time before people really feel like you are a great program and I think we definitely have achieved that.”

On this team starting to hit its stride:

“The last five games we have played really well. The first four games we played pretty good. Nine out of 10 games we’ve played pretty doggone good. I think we are the only team in the country that’s top 5 offense and defense. I don’t know what else we can do. This team has played well. Most of our numbers are as good as they have ever been. I really like this team. We’re better offensively right now than we were last year. I think we are playing better on defense right now than we did last year. More consistent and creating more turnovers. Doing a lot of things so I think we are in a good place. The biggest thing is the guys love to prepare. They are committed to the process that we have to get ready every week. They come to work every day.The leadership and the chemsitry is amazing. When you have that, and you are talented, then you have a chance to win at a high level. 

Good teams should get better. I think you’ve seen that with our team. We’ve gotten better and better and better. We’re at that point in the season where we should all be at our best right now. Our best shouldn’t have been in September. Right now, we should have been at our best. I think that we’ve played our best football the past gew weeks. Hopefulyl we can continue to build upon that.”

On postgame handshake with NC State coach Dave Doeren and if there’s any ill will between the two:

“A frosty handshake? Yeah, it was freakin 30 degrees. There is nothing - what kind of a question is that? ‘Great game. Good luck the rest of the way.’ Most times I hardly ever get to spend 10 seconds with a coach. It’s quick. If you’re at Clemson, it’s a mad dash to the paw to sing the alma mater. 

Dave and I have a great relationship. That’s just a question trying to create something. He was very nice. A game like that, you aren’t going to stand out there and sing ‘kumbaya.’ I’ve been on both sides of it. Nobody wants to sit there and chit chat.”