Swinney on handling loss to Irish: It either shines you up or grinds you up

Swinney reacts to a play during the loss to Irish. (Photo courtesy of ACC)

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Tue Nov 10 08:01:03 GMT-04:00 2020

Dabo Swinney wants his team to turn the hurt they feel from the loss to Notre Dame into production. As he says, the loss will either shine you up or grind you up.

Clemson lost a regular-season game for the first time since 2017 in a double-overtime thriller at Notre Dame last weekend, and the team returned to the practice field Monday night. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence was expected to practice for the first time since his COVID diagnosis, while several other players will be evaluated for injuries during the week.

The Tigers will only hold meetings Tuesday, and then practice Wednesday and Thursday before taking the weekend off and starting preparation for Florida State next Monday.

Swinney met with the media Monday evening and said his team has the character it takes to move on after the loss.

"Tough one the other night for us. I always tell our team that three things you don’t get back are time, words, and opportunity,” Swinney said. “That was one that got away from us for sure. We have to flush it and keep moving. We have a windshield mentality and we will move on. It certainly wasn't the result we wanted, but what a game. What an epic, epic game. I am super proud of our team and proud of our staff. Lots we have to improve on and lots we have to do better. But, I will jump in the foxhole with this group any day of the week. We left it all on the field. I saw heart, I saw belief, toughness, team, courage, will, and a team fighting with everything that it had. To me, that is special. Those are the hard things you have to have to be a special team. Those are the ingredients for a championship team.”

The team can either let the loss shine them up or grind them up.

“I'm just really proud of our guys and we have to keep moving forward. No matter what happened in that game. That is part of this team’s story and part of this team’s journey, and it hurts,” Swinney said. “I am glad it hurts, and we have to turn that hurt into production. We need to play cleaner and be more precise. Anybody can handle the good times. We are judged by how we handle the tough ones. It either shines you up or grinds you up. The only thing off the table for this team is that going undefeated is off the table. Hey, it has been three years since we lost a regular-season game. Give credit to Notre Dame. They played their hearts out. Just a great, great ballgame. It's unfortunate that we did not get it done. Adversity brings out the best in good people and we have a lot of good people on this staff and this team.”

The team will use the open date to self-study and work on correcting the mistakes that have popped up in recent weeks.

“We will have a good crossover study and self-scout. We will do a lot of work on Clemson,” Swinney said. “We have a lot of things we need to improve upon. We will do that and study that. We will get our team healthy and work with our young guys. We need to get a head start on Florida State, but it is really about Clemson this week more than anything."

On DJ Uiagalelei

“There is always a silver lining. It depends on how you want to look at it. I'm glad he was able to get two starts under his belt. He was able to get two flat-out battles under his belt. That will pay huge dividends for him this year and next year ... the confidence booster for him. You won't have to hold your breath if Trevor falls down. He played not only well but amazing."

Concerns on offensive line and lack of running game

"They just outplayed us ... both sides of the ball. They won the line of scrimmage. They won the turnover margin and out big-played us. We have to get better and have to improve on some things. Nothing we cannot improve on. They won third down and field position. If you don't change anything else in the entire game, if you end every drive with a kick, we win the game. We gave up 10 points on the drop ball and the turnover. That's the first time since 1973 (a touchdown given up off of an offensive turnover in three consecutive games). But that'll turn and it'll change. It is something we have to improve on and we will. Now, give them a lot of credit. Some of these teams are forcing us to throw the ball. Sometimes there are a lot of guys in the hole, unblocked guys and you have to try to take advantage of it.

"We are very, very explosive and I am excited about that but I am disappointed in our running the ball over the last couple of games. We have to do a better job of helping them and we have to be cleaner and more precise in some of the things we do. But we will be fine. Same thing on defense. We were poor in stopping the run and could not keep the quarterback from extending plays. We will grow from this. A bad day but not a bad year. We all take ownership of what we have to do."

Injuries

“We had a bunch of people that went down. It was just a crazy, crazy thing but the guys continued to battle. As far as update you know again, you know, we're gonna see where they are tonight and we'll go from there. The good news is I don't think (any of them are serious). Probably the worst one was Frank Ladson. And, you know, it just is, he's had a couple bad, bad, bad breaks. He hurt his foot. And so he's, he's probably gonna be out for a couple weeks. But that's probably the worst. I mean we got good news for (Bryan) Bresee as far as, you know, it wasn't anything in no ligament damage or anything like that just kind of, you know, get hit on it. But there's a lot of guys that are sore. And again, a lot of got rid of a couple concussions."