Five things Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said after beating Notre Dame football

CLEMSON, S.C. — Dabo Swinney has a lot of wins to draw on. One hundred and 67 of them as the head coach at Clemson. Saturday’s victory over Notre Dame, the two-time national champion skipper said, is right up there with the best of them.

“It was just a special, special day,” Swinney said. “That’s one I’ll never forget. It was just an amazing win.”

General thoughts on Clemson’s win over Notre Dame

“We won the turnover margin. And we were pretty dominant in the first half with no turnovers. In the second half, 2023 kind of showed back up. You battle again. We are a tough team to beat when we don’t beat ourselves and we take care of the ball like we did today, especially in that first half. I’m just thankful. It’s a blessing. For a minute there I thought it was going to be eight years ago all over again and come down to a two-point conversion. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

“I’m just proud of our team. We had the least amount of guys available today that we’ve had all year. We played a great football team, and we didn’t make any excuses. I told them all week, ‘Nobody cares. Nobody cares. What we don’t have, quit worrying about it. we have plenty. Let’s take what we got, and let’s go beat what they got. You guys are here. You’re on scholarship. This is an opportunity.’ And man, those guys responded. It was awesome.”

On facing the Notre Dame offense

“Defensively, just awesome. Three turnovers. It was frustrating in the first half because they popped a couple of runs on us. That’s what they do though. They create gaps, and if you don’t play over the top — they motioned and we didn’t slingshot it one time, so now there is a gap free. And they find it. But good backs find it.

“The quarterback scrambled for a massive play. And then we don’t leverage one time on the touchdown. Might have fell down out there or something. We don’t leverage the ball. When people can run around you, bad stuff happens. That’s just the No. 1 thing in defensive football is leveraging the ball.

“So we gave up a few busted plays, but man that second half was awesome. But the key to the game to me was what we did in the red zone. We gave up some plays and they got into the red zone but we held them to field goals. And that was the difference in the game.”

On the Clemson offense against the Notre Dame defense

“My big thing this week was if we could just get a hat on a hat we were going to have a chance. If we could just cover them up and minimize some things off the edge. We had a good plan. The guys executed it well. [Phil] Mafah was awesome. We did a good job. We had some duo as well. It worked out well for us.

“There were a couple of those drives at the end, we’d like to have a couple of those back. I felt like we had a chance to put it away. And then obviously the fumble at the end, it was unbelievable. Unbelievable.”

On becoming the all-time wins leader at Clemson

“I wish it happened about four games ago. But I was joking with Tim Bourret, Frank Howard‘s probably gotten in pretty good with God up there. Knowing Coach Howard, he’s probably got his ear, and I can hear him right now, ‘We’re going to make this hard on this ole boy.’ I think he probably planned this before the season. It’s going to happen at Notre Dame. I’m glad it happened here. It was pretty cool… for it to come against a team like Notre Dame. I think the biggest thing is, Coach Howard wanted to remind everybody that it ain’t easy to win.”

On slowing down the Notre Dame passing game with a depleted secondary

“Those guys were relentless up front, but we got good players. That little Avieon [Terrell], he’s special now. I mean, [Shelton Lewis] ain’t no slouch. [Andrew] Mukuba and [Khalil] Barnes, Barnes has been a special player for us all year. So, we got great depth. We just hadn’t played a complete game. This is only the third time all year we won the turnover margin. I know everybody wants these great answers and nobody wants to hear when I tell you, if we’re not last in the country in turnovers, we’re 8-1, 9-0. That’s just the reality.”