Clemson coach Dabo Swinney: ‘Payton, he’s a game wrecker’
NC State is out of its bye, and it will begin its final five game stretch against Clemson on Saturday afternoon at a sold-out Carter-Finley Stadium. While the Wolfpack are just 1-8 against the Tigers under coach Dave Doeren, this season’s meeting presents an intriguing opportunity.
While the Pack has not had the number of wins it wanted to have by this point in the year, the Tigers are in the same boat. Both teams have 4-3 records, which include sub-.500 marks in ACC play.
As NC State has a winnable game against Clemson, Tigers coach Dabo Swinney noted how similar the two teams have been up to this point.
“This is a good football team,” Swinney said of NC State during his Tuesday press conference. “Similar to us, I think they’re better than their record. Not much has changed when you watch NC State: they’re tough, they’re physical, they’re aggressive.”
Swinney was positive about NC State’s offense and defense, but he had a rave review for Wolfpack graduate linebacker Payton Wilson, who leads the ACC with 81 total tackles.
“I think Payton, he’s a game wrecker,” Swinney said. “He is fun to watch. I hate we’ve got to play against him, but he’s one of those guys when you watch tape, you kind of have to tip your hat. This is a great football player. Maybe the fastest guy on the field, he can absolutely fly.”
While Swinney had nothing but compliments for Wilson, he was also concerned about NC State’s offense — particularly its stretch runs.
The 16-year coach said the Pack uses its scheme to put defenses in a tough spot, which can lead to explosive runs if the team does not fit its gaps. And against Miami last week, Clemson struggled with that — it resulted in a 28-20 overtime loss to the Hurricanes.
“These guys, they challenge you as much as anybody schematically,” Swinney said of NC State. “They run all kinds of counters. … They do a lot of stuff, but bread and butter, everything comes off that stretch and you can get cut in half if you’re not really disciplined there.”
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Swinney noted that the Tigers have to do “a great job” at fitting the run in Raleigh this weekend.
While the Tigers’ defense knows what it needs to do against the Wolfpack, Swinney said his offense has two things to clean up before the NC State contest: third down conversions and turnovers.
Clemson has been decent on third down conversions this season — fifth in the ACC at 43.9% — but the Tigers were just 4-for-14 at Miami.
But that is not the ugliest stat for the Tigers. Its turnovers are. Clemson has struggled with fumbles — quarterback Cade Klubnik leads the country with eight — and Swinney said a key to winning at NC State will be taking care of the football.
“Let’s win the turnover margin,” Swinney said. “We’re last — dead last — and we’ve got a really good team. … The reason we are where we are is turnovers. We’re last in the country in fumbles, it’s where they happen too, and we’re last in red zone [offense.]”
Swinney said there are other factors to the Tigers’ rocky season, but it all goes back to turnovers at the end of the day.
“We’re good enough to win every single game,” Swinney said. “We’re good enough to line up and play with anybody. But it’s hard to win, and it’s really hard to win when you have the catastrophic turnovers that we’ve had.”
