Dabo Swinney explains whether he expected this level of success over final month

After a disappointing start to its season, coach Dabo Swinney and Clemson managed to end things on a positive note, winning the final four games of the regular season to finish with eight wins.

It might not have been the year Clemson fans have grown accustomed to enjoying, but it offered Swinney something special.

“The leadership on this team, I mean it’s inspiring, man, to see these guys,” Dabo Swinney said. “So happy for them. I really am. It’s been fun to be a part of it.”

Clemson never quit.

It would have been easy to pack it up and go through the motions after starting the season 4-4, but the Tigers never took that approach. In fact, Swinney had no doubts that his team would respond the right way.

“Absolutely, heck yeah,” he said. “I think we’re going to win every game. I have never, ever gone into a game not thinking we’re going to win. Ever. If that day ever comes it’s probably time for me to go.”

And it’s not that there weren’t difficult opponents down the stretch. Two of the final four games came against ranked Notre Dame and North Carolina squads.

Tricky Georgia Tech and South Carolina teams filled out the balance of the final month of the season.

Swinney didn’t care much who the opponents were, he just wanted Clemson playing to its standards.

“I just think we’re supposed to win, and I believe that,” Dabo Swinney said. “You’ve got to do what it takes to win. You’ve got to earn it. But absolutely, I mean we competed our butts off, and it’s disappointing that we didn’t win some of those other games. You’re talking about overtime, double overtime and a pick-six, one-score game. We just had a lot of critical mistakes and we just played better.”

Much of that changed in the final four games. Clemson started taking better care of the football and executing in key spots.

The result? Four straight wins and some momentum going into bowl season and the offseason.

“We played our best football,” Dabo Swinney said. “We won the turnover margin every game. That’s four in a row. We’ve won four games. If you go back and look at the common denominator of our losses, and it’s not just turnovers, it’s the type of turnovers, it’s where they are. It’s going into score, it’s pick-sixes, it’s scoop and scores. Crazy stuff. That’s football. All you can do is respond.”

Dabo Swinney broke down exactly why he was so proud of the way Clemson finished its season.

“That’s what’s so great about it, football is like life,” he said. “It’s exactly like life, that’s why it’s such a great teacher when you’ve got 18- to 23-year-old young people that work really hard. And everybody, we work hard to get a result and it doesn’t go your way. You know, especially in today’s world where all the noise and distractions, you can lose your focus and you can splinter and you can point fingers, you can whatever.

“It’s really inspiring to see a group of young people stay together, and not only stay together, grow stronger and keep going, keep getting up. It’s not what happens, it’s how you respond. That’s what happened. That’s the way it is in life. Stuff happens, it doesn’t always go the way… but you’ve got to respond. It’s the same thing in football, and I think that’s why football’s such a great teacher.”