Dabo Swinney on CFB Playoff: "We are excited to be back in it"

During an interview with ESPN, Dabo Swinney gave his thoughts on the upcoming matchup with the Ohio State Buckeyes. Here are a few unedited notes from the conversation.

On the short time off before the semifinal matchup:

"It's very different. We just talked about that this morning, it's basically like an open date, it's almost identical to what we, we just had with Notre Dame. In fact, I think we got a couple of less days than we had in preparation for Notre Dame. We play in 12 days we've got 11 days to get ready. We've got to maximize our time and literally, it's not a 'bowl mentality,' normally we would be off a week after the ACC Championship game and then have three or so weeks to get ready. So just treat it like an open date-- get ready, maximize your time, and we're excited about it. At the end of the day, you're in the playoffs. Our goal was to win the ACC Championship and if we did that, we knew we'd have an opportunity to be in the playoffs. So, just proud of this team and we've got one goal left, and that's to win the closer, if we can do that it's gonna be a special, special ending."

On facing Ohio State:

"I mean not surprised, because that's you know what the committee has demonstrated over the past few weeks. Congratulations to those guys, we all know  Ohio State is an incredibly talented team and we look forward to a great matchup. We had a heck of a game with them last year and, and I doubt it will be anything different this year. It's gonna be a great competitive game-- both teams fighting-- probably come down to a few plays. We'll be looking forward to it back in New Orleans."

On how he will motivate his team:

"Just do what we've been doing. I think we've won more games than anybody in the last five years, so, we haven't been an underdog very much. We've pretty much been a favorite in just about every game-- outside of just a couple. So we just do what we do. We respect every opponent. We have to have great preparation. We have to practice with purpose, [with] great effort, with emphasis on technique. Everybody's got to be committed. You got to be committed on and off the field to get yourself ready in every regard, mentally, physically, you name it. Really just nothing different, we know we're going to get everybody's best shot, every single week. That's been the case for a long time. We're just excited to be back in it and look forward to competing against a great team."

On the new faces on this team:

"It has been incredible. To me that even further emphasizes the greatness of Trevor Lawrence,  in that, if you told me back in March, that we weren't going to have Justyn Ross, [Joe] Ngata, and Frank Ladson, for all and most of the year. And then tell me that we're going to go through for more yards than any team in Clemson history? You know this team broke the 2016 Deshaun Watson, Mike Williams, all those guys that are all in the NFL now, I wouldn't have believed it. The credit goes to these guys stepping up. Cornell [Powell] and Amari [Rodgers] have been amazing. The emergence of E.J. [Williams], our tight ends. What we've done with Travis Etienne in the passing game, what he's done this year rushing and receiving, hasn't been done since say Saquan Barkley and it's only been done four times in 20 years."

On Nolan Turner being out for the first half:

"Yeah, we'll miss Nolan. There's no question. he's been a quarterback for us. He's a great player. I mean, what a great example he is. He had no Division 1 offers and here we are talking about him on the playoff Sunday. Had an unbelievable career. He'll be drafted one day, and he's played as well at safety for us this year as any safety we've had. He'll be a big miss for us, but the silver lining in 2020, if you will, we've had to play more people than ever. We started 23 different people on defense this year, that's the most, by far, since, since Coach Venables has been here, for sure. We usually average about 16 a year. So we've had a lot of guys get a lot of experience. We got Lannden Zanders back yesterday, the first game he's played in a while. Joseph Charleston's gotten a lot of experience Ray Thornton, Tyler Venables, you know, R.J. Mickens, so we've been able to grow some guys up, get some experience, create some depth there, that we feel good about. Thankfully he's not out the whole game, but hopefully, those guys will step up do a good job too till he can get back out there in the second half."