Dabo Swinney addresses possible personnel changes for Clemson

Clemson was one of eight ranked teams this weekend that suffered an upset loss, as they fell 35-14 to Notre Dame on the road Saturday. Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was asked following the game if he was going to make any personnel changes following their big loss, which he quickly countered.

“We’ve got who we’ve got, I mean I still believe in my guys,” Swinney said. “I’m not gonna let one moment like this change that, we’re all in it together. We’re all in it together, our staff, our players, this is a really bad day when we put everything like we do into a moment like this and come up short.”

Clemson’s poor performance was highlighted by disappointing play in all three phases of the game: offense defense and special teams. The Tigers started the game slow, getting a punt blocked following their first offensive possession that was returned 17 yards for a Notre Dame touchdown.

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From that point forward both sides of the ball weren’t clicking for Clemson, as their defense struggled stopping the Irish’s rushing attack allowing 263 yards on the ground. On offense, their rushing attack was stagnant, failing to reach 100 yards rushing on the day and failing to reach the end zone until their final two offensive possessions of the game.

“There’s always a winner and a loser whether you lose by one or you just get your butt flat-out handed to you like we did tonight, neither one of them feel good. And we’re 8-1, we didn’t lose three games tonight, we lost one,” Swinney said.

The Tigers also had a second straight disappointing performance from quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, who was replaced by freshman Cade Klubnik late in the third quarter, but was placed back into the game after Klubnik threw an interception on his very first pass attempt of the game.

Clemson surely has some issues to iron out at the quarterback position and others as they head into the home stretch of their season, which Swinney and his staff plan on evaluating like they do every single week regardless of the result on the scoreboard.

“The key is not to let it beat you again, and so I don’t have any unshakable belief in our guys and our staff, but we gotta respond and we gotta own it. So it’ll be a long day tomorrow, a lot of everything, evaluate everything, we do that every week. There’s so many things that we’re evaluating, but obviously, this is magnified,” Swinney said.