Everything Dabo Swinney said before Clemson plays SMU for ACC Championship

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney spoke with the media ahead of facing SMU in the ACC Championship game on Saturday. Here’s the full transcript of what he said Sunday.

Opening statement: “College football, it’s a crazy world. And obviously we had a range of emotions yesterday and with a disappointing rivalry game loss. And, but you got to play them all out and then you count them up at the end. And for us, we’re super excited to be back in this conference championship for the 10th time in the past 16 years. And we earned it. You play them all, we all get eight games and we went seven and one. And, man, I want to congratulate SMU going 8-0 in the league. What a great year they’ve had. Congratulate Rhett in the job he’s done and I look forward to competing against them in a great matchup. One of the best venues that you can play in up there in Charlotte. It should be a heck of a game. So just thankful to have the opportunity to be playing this week and proud of our team. Again, we had a good regular season. We didn’t finish great the way we wanted to, but now it’s all about postseason. You get what you qualify for and we’ve qualified for our league championship. We’ve earned that. And so now, you know, see if we can go find a way to win this thing.” 

On SMU’s CFP chances with or without loss on Saturday: “I mean, the ACC has had a great year. There’s a bunch of teams that I think are eight, nine -plus wins. There’s going to be a bunch of bowl-eligible teams. It’s been a very competitive year in the league. You’ve seen teams that have competed at a high level outside of the league. I think we’ve certainly scheduled tough. We do that every year here, but I think for SMU, I mean… I mean, obviously I know they want to win the game, but I think they should be in no matter what. I think they’ve earned that. I mean, I don’t think that they should be punished with whatever the outcome in this game is. I know the system is what it is and it’s been set up. But  they’re an 11-1 football team. And they have done an awesome job. And, you know, so, and obviously for us, we got to win. I mean, this is what it is. This playoff football for us. I mean, we qualified for the postseason. And as crazy a day as yesterday was, for the first time since before the Louisville game, we control our destiny. You know, so, and again, if we’d have had a great regular season, then maybe we would have that opportunity but we’ve got to win. But SMU, I think they should be in and quite frankly, I can’t imagine that Miami wouldn’t be in you know, it’s they lost to a really good Georgia Tech team. We saw Georgia Tech, you know, in the crazy game they have with Georgia at Georgia and then I mean they lost to a good Syracuse team who’s 9-3 so I mean we got probably as good a quarterback as there is in the country. So I mean I think it’s been a tough, tough league you know this year and again, you got 17 teams and you know for us to be one of the two that qualified to go play in this league championship again, I’m really proud of that but I think the league deserves the recognition and we’ll see how it all plays out. But for us, we know, I mean it’s pretty simple with us, we got to go win.”

On Miami’s loss to Syracuse: “Yeah, I actually was at home. I had just gotten home. You know we have a lot going on after games at home, recruiting, and then you got press conference and you got the TV show. All that stuff, a lot going on, you know, and by the time I got home, I actually didn’t even have it on until I got home because I think it was 21 nothing and so I didn’t even have it on. I didn’t know what was going on and then I got home. It was 35-28 and so yeah, I was like wow so. And then all of a sudden when the game was over, my phone starts blowing up from all the players and friends and colleagues and all that stuff. And then not long after that, I get a FaceTime call from Fran Brown. That was wild. That was, put that in my memoir one day, that was a first. And he was hilarious on the FaceTime call. But hey, a range of emotions, obviously a ton of disappointment. That game is a season of its own. I mean, I’ve been in 21 of them. I’ve won a bunch of them and I’ve had some tough losses. And yesterday was a very tough loss. It hurts, because it means a lot to a lot of people. And we were in position to win the game, and we didn’t get it done, and they did. And they earned the bragging rights to be the best team in the state this year. They earned it. And so that hurts, it’s a tough way to end the regular season. But to see it in that moment, and then all of a sudden, man, your emotions go, ‘Wow, we’re in the championship,’ and we earned that as well. And so excitement kind of took over and started thinking about what my Sunday was gonna look like as opposed to what it was gonna look like if they didn’t win that game. So excited to be at work this week, excited to have another game to play, and an opportunity for a conference championship. And if you do that, you qualify for bigger and better things. Anything can happen, so we were fortunate for sure. You know, things worked out our way. It’s like I told my wife is like, you know, we had pocket sixes and a two. And we hit a two on the river for the classic two pair to win it. So hey, but a win is a win and we got an opportunity to go see if we can be the ACC champs.”

On what Fran Brown said: “Yeah, I can’t really repeat what he said. It was kind of colorful, but hilarious and you know, I appreciated the call and he was fired up man. I mean he was fired up and excited for us. But yeah, I can’t really, I can’t really repeat what he said. But it was… that was a great call. Really appreciated that. I didn’t even know, I didn’t even know he had given me a shout out on TV. I didn’t know, I had all kind of people sending me that. But yeah, pretty cool.”

On playing in the ACC title game after Clemson’s loss to SC: “I mean, come on, David, is it good? Of course, man, what kind of question is that? We’re playing for a freaking championship. I mean, listen, it’s like the NFL now in that you have, I mean, it’s a 17-team league, right? And you don’t get to play everybody and some team’s games mean more than others. And we go schedule just like in the NFL, they got divisions and conferences. And you see teams with losing records get in the playoffs, right? It’s all about winning the right games and qualifying. And I mean, yeah, you’re pissed off and disappointed about missing an opportunity yesterday, for sure. And you hurt for that, because we could have had a great regular season and we came up short, but we’re 7-1 in our league. And we’re playing for a championship, for the 10th time in 16 years. So you’re dang straight, that’s not good, it’s great. That’s great. When there’s 17 teams competing for the same thing and only two get a chance to go have a chance to win it, yeah, that’s great. And we were 4-4 in the league last year. So we didn’t accomplish all of our goals this year to this point, but we got better in a lot of areas and again, in particular, conference. We weren’t in the championship last year. And so went from 4-4 to 7-1and we’re back in it. We’re playing a hot team. We’re playing one of the best teams in the country that’s playing with a lot of precision on both sides of the ball. And we’re gonna have to play our best football and we’ve not done that yet. We were close. We had some opportunity yesterday and we didn’t do it. But you know what? It ain’t too late to play our best football. And hopefully we can find a way to get that done this week and hold that trophy up, but it’ll be a tall task.” 

On sticking together through adversity: “There’s no question. Uh, it is a close knit bunch. And man, there was a lot of pain in that locker room yesterday, a lot of hurt. Um, and they laid it on the line. They competed their butts off. And  you know, we’re a team that just continues to keep moving forward. And, um, you know, again, we had one disappointing conference game. But we rallied and we got to seven and one, and you can only play the games you got. So I’m really proud of them. They’ve competed their butts off all year. And again, this is what it’s all about. At the end of the day, everybody wants a chance to play in your championship. And regardless of how you get there, whether you’re 12-0 or 9-3, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do on that day. And in the way the system is set up now, again, you have an opportunity. I mean, we got a chance to go to our seventh college football playoff with a win. And anything can happen, you know, so it’s college football, anything can happen. But again, I’m proud of how they’ve stuck together. We got a lot of, most of our team is gonna be back next year. And these kids have really grown in a lot of ways. Our quarterback has had a heck of a year. He really has and our offensive line has had a heck of a year. Just losing one of those guys, we’ve had defensive linemen step up. We’ve got a good kicker. We got some young skill on both sides of the ball that have done a lot of good things. And so, we got a lot of great days ahead for us at Clemson football. But it’s about finishing this year, the very best we can. And again, to have this opportunity in the postseason is a blessing. And I’m proud of how everybody’s hung in there and have kept battling. And now, let’s see if we can go have the type of postseason that we all dream about.” 

On the midfield altercation after SC game: “How do you know I wasn’t directly in the middle of it? You obviously don’t know, because I was dead in the middle of it and lucky to get out alive. It was dangerous. It was scary. And it was dangerous. And we’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore. And we can’t be hypocrites either. And listen, I honestly hadn’t really been a part of much of that, but that was something that happened here a couple years ago. And then last year we went down there and we had a player go plant a flag. And I didn’t know about that till after it happened and was disappointed in that. And then again, this year, that seems to be a thing. And listen, it just shouldn’t happen. And Shane and I will talk about that and make sure that that doesn’t happen moving forward cuz that’s dangerous and people could have got hurt. I mean, it could have been a bad situation. I know you saw a lot worse at some other places for the same thing. But Shane and I both got to do a better job in that and we will. I promise you, we went down there next year, whenever we win there again, that’s not something we’re gonna do. I’m gonna make sure of that. You win, you got bragging rights. You certainly want to celebrate that and be excited about that as you should. But just can’t happen. But it could have really gotten out of hand yesterday cuz there’s a lot of people down there. And so I think we can all be better there. And we’re in that too, because I know that we had a player do that last year down there and it’s not something that we need to really be involved in. Let’s win the game. Let’s celebrate with our team and shake hands and let’s move on. That’s what we need to do. So I think there’s a lot that everybody across college football can learn from yesterday cuz that was a bad look for college football.” 

On multitasking for National Signing Day: “I mean, it’s just another day, another day at the office. I mean, it’s just what we do. It’s a constant. We have a huge staff. We have a whole recruiting department. I mean, we have lots of people who help manage all those types of things. So, you know, it just kind of is what it is. You know, this is the high school date coming up this week and the, which I’m glad they moved off the portal time, so a lot of these high school kids can get signed and get in place and then you figure it out from there. But it just kind of, you know, just another day at the office. There’s always something to manage, always something going on, lots of multitasking. But again, we’ve got a great staff who’s on top of all that stuff.” 

On clock management: “How do I plan on managing the clock? Well, just, you know, normal. We have a clock management system in place depending on whether you’re trying to milk the clock, where you’re up, kind of a four minute type of offense. Or, and a lot of that depends on how many timeouts they have or vice versa, we’re behind and now you’re trying to manage your timeouts. We actually had that yesterday, we’re trying to save our timeouts. And what was disappointing and how that ended because we had it really set up the way we wanted and we just had a bad play right there at the end and didn’t get a chance to finish it off. But we have a system in place, regardless if you’re up or if you’re down. And then, do you need a field goal? Do you need a touchdown? And how many timeouts do we have? How many timeouts does the opponent have? And all of those things dictate how you do your clock management.”

On Sammy Brown sitting in the fourth quarter: “Yeah, they just went into, you know, more of a nickel package, and, you know, I mean, he started in our base package, and, you know, we had a good game, you know, so, I mean, he’s had a good season, and that’s really it. I mean, it’s the coach’s decision there. Doesn’t mean you’re always making the right decisions, but, you know, we went into a little bit more of a nickel as opposed to… get a little more speed on the field in our nickel package, but that’s it.” 

On facing SMU, Rhett Lashlee’s offense: “Yeah, we had our scouting group go ahead and do some breakdown of them. We obviously knew they were in the championship game and we knew we had an opportunity. So we didn’t wanna just be starting from scratch on Sunday if it worked out. So we at least had kind of some base scouting stuff done for today. But I’ve seen them on a couple of crossover games. Pitt and Louisville, I believe. There were a couple games that I’ve had a chance to put my eyes on them a little bit this year, but just getting going on the totality of them. But the biggest thing is, they’re gonna play fast. They’re gonna stress you with their splits. Really, really explosive running back. I think they’ve got a lot of veteran players that they’ve done a good job. The offensive line has been really good for them all year. They’ve been a really stout defense. But I think offensively, this quarterback is a problem. I mean, he’s dynamic. He can really extend plays, they’ve got really good skill outside. They’ve got, I think, a really, really good passing game. But that back is explosive, man, he’s really, really good. So I just think they’re a complete group. That’s why they’re who they are this year. And they’ve really played incredibly well. And I think they had some personnel change when they went with this new quarterback, and man, he’s delivered for them. And then they’ve won the close game, so scoring a bunch of points. So that’s been a challenge for everybody that they’ve played. So it’s a good football team. And again, I’ll dive a little bit more into their personnel as we go through the night and then tomorrow. But to me, I think they’re certainly, again, regardless of what happens in this game, there’s no question they deserve to be in the playoff.” 

On recruiting and the transfer portal mindset for Clemson:  “My mindset is always about what’s best for Clemson and that’s the way it’s been for 16 years and we do whatever that is. We’ve signed a kid out of the portal two out of the last three years. If you check our roster and our talent, we’ve got a really good roster. And we’ve been second or third in retention. But we will use whatever tool we have, whatever we have and we make those decisions, what’s best for Clemson. And  all that depends on who’s leaving, who’s back, who are your starters? Do you believe in those guys that you have? If not, then you’ve got to either have somebody that’s coming in that you have like a Wesco or TJ Moore that you think’s elite. An Ashton Hampton that you want to spend the next few years with. Or Peter Woods or TJ Parker that you really know, ‘Hey, this guy is the guy.’ If you don’t have that, then you try to go get that. But I think everybody’s gonna have to recruit the portal with going to 105 and the way the system is set up, you know. So we just haven’t had many guys leave our program that we haven’t had the starter here, that we believe in. You know, so we just haven’t. Most of the kids that have left our program have been backups and they just want to go somewhere and play. And so you have a decision to make, just like this past year, we had a decision to make with Ryan Linthicum. He was a guy, we lost a center who’s on the active roster for the Raiders now in Will Putnam, who was a really good player. Everybody else is back. So we actually looked at a couple of portal guys and, but we didn’t get them. And then we said, ‘Okay, let’s give Ryan a chance this spring.’ And by the end of spring, we’re like, ‘We’re good. This guy’s going to get it done.’ And so, and guess what? He has gotten it done. He’s been as valuable a player that we have and he’s on his fourth year and he’s got another year.

“So that’s what kept us out of the portal last year is we really love the receivers that were coming in. We love our running back. We love Linthicum and where he was. A lot of people wanted me to go get a portal quarterback, but we believe in Cade Klubnik. And he’s had a great year. And so, we had Sammy Brown coming in at linebacker to go along with Woodaz and Barrett, we had all them D-linemen back and we believe in those guys. So, I know there’s a lot of narratives out there that people love to make up and write whatever they wanna write and hear what they wanna hear. We’re gonna do what’s best for Clemson. We always do that. But what’s best for Clemson is a reflection of what your roster looks like year in and year out. So. I see very few programs that won’t have to sign some portal kids with again going to 105 and then just the way things have been set up.”

On Cade Klubnik’s growth, leadership: “Yeah, it’s been awesome, you know, he came in here as a true freshman and and you know really wasn’t ready to play, got a little experience. He was kind of physically not quite ready and just hadn’t had a lot of football adversity, had very little. I think closest game he had was maybe 14 points in high school. And won three state championships, won the Elite 11, life was good. And he ends up being the starter in this game and won the MVP of the ACC Championship game as a freshman. And then his second year, he had a rough start where he was just inconsistent and a lot of negative plays but he really finished well last year. And he carried that momentum into this year. And last year, he was trying to become the leader of the offense. And now he’s a leader of the team. And I’m really proud of him. He’s gotten better and better. And again, he’d be the first to tell you had a critical mistake yesterday. But he also had a ton of great plays. And he has had a heck of a year for us. He really has. And when you look at what he’s done statistically. He’s just, everything he needed to do this year, first of all, he’s physically better. He’s been incredibly impactful with his legs, which is an area he needed to improve. He’s taking care of the ball better, less negative plays than what he had as a first year starter. So good players get better if they’re coachable and they’re made of the right stuff and he epitomizes that. And then from a leadership standpoint, I mean, he has just become truly a voice for the team. I mean, because he’s a hard worker, man, these kids see it. So they love Cade and believe in him and I’m thankful he’s got another year. He’s just gonna continue to get better.”

On playing Clemson’s best football in December: “Because we’ve been right there. I mean, we match up. I mean, we can be explosive. We’ve got a quarterback that’s playing well for us. We’ve got skill. Man, we’ve got some dudes up front that can really play in the line of scrimmage. Our offensive line has been tremendous. The way they’ve protected all year long has been really, really good. And I thought yesterday was… I think South Carolina’s had a great year. And I thought it was an incredibly physical game on both sides and it came down to the last play. And so, I just think they’re battle tested, heading into the end. They know they know they can win, now we got to go win. I thought we found a way to lose yesterday and I thought they found a way to win. But hey, it’s all over now, that’s behind us. It’s all about this moment. But what makes me believe that is I know who these guys are. I know what they’re capable of doing. I’m with them every day.” 

On Tyler Brown’s status vs SMU: “Yeah, well, obviously he’s been out all year, but we’re hopeful that he’s gonna be able to get back into practice this week. So, hadn’t played all year, but we’ll see. I mean, we anticipate and practice him, but I don’t know much more than that until I really see him out on the field and see how he does.” 

On Clemson WR Bryant Wesco: “Yeah, he’s gonna be a special player. And he had a good game yesterday and we just missed him by a foot on a slant route that probably goes to the house, so it’s a game of inches there, but I’m really proud of him. I mean, you saw him in high school. So, a really long lean kid. You know, incredibly explosive, a ton of confidence and man, he came in January. He’s still a work in progress physically, but I think another year, offseason, as far as really physically developing, I think it’s gonna help him a ton. But he’s fast. He’s confident. He’s an incredibly smart kid. He can really play any of the positions. And to walk in here and win a starting job, man, he’s earned it. And good to see him on that stage yesterday, make some of the plays that he made. So it’s just, sky’s the limit for that kid, great kid, great family. And he’s just gonna keep getting better and better and better. Super excited about he and TJ and what they both were able to do this season. And now they’ve got confidence, they’re not freshmen anymore going into the postseason. So hopefully they’ll make some great plays in this postseason that everybody will remember them for.”