Dabo Swinney sees chaotic weekend of CFB as a favor for Clemson

Clemson was on the right side of a tough weekend for ranked teams going on the road this past weekend.

Grayson Mann - Staff Writer - Tuesday, October 08 2024

CLEMSON - Messages can be challenging to maintain over the course of a long season.

For Dabo Swinney, the world outside of Clemson did wonders for reinforcing his own themes.

Since the Georgia matchup, the Tigers have crushed opponents on their way to four straight wins, vaulting back to the top ten for the first time since the Duke opener.

How can Swinney continue to preach that each opponent is worthy of his team’s best version of preparation?

He might be thanking Vanderbilt and several other programs for giving him plenty of bulletin board material.

While Clemson was taking care of Florida State on the road, chaos in the college football world unraveled around the country. Five teams within the top 12 dropped games, marking plenty of memorable upsets. The most notable of the bunch came in Nashville, with Vanderbilt rallying to take down No. 1 Alabama in a shootout, 40-35. The week prior, the Crimson Tide took down the Georgia Bulldogs in a classic, establishing themselves as one of the best teams in the nation.

A lot can change in seven days.

Swinney wasn’t aware of the monumental upset until after his team took down the Seminoles, but he viewed it as a great time to reinforce his message.

“You would (have to show your team) back in the old days, but now you don't have to show anything,” Swinney said. “They all got it, right? They're telling me about it. Did you see that? Did you see this? I mean, I couldn't believe it. I didn't know anything about that until I entered the locker room. But yeah, as I said, college football did us a favor. This is a week where if you pay attention to what people say on the outside, well, they're going to be saying, Hey, we're supposed to win. This ain't a game of supposed to. This is a game of what you do. It's a game of performance. And that's why I always talk about it; that's why I think we've been really consistent. We've created that windshield mentality for years and years and years and years.”

Swinney tries to emphasize respecting opponents regardless of their record. He cited Florida State’s 1-4 record as something that’s easy to creep into your mind if preparation is not to a standard.

Conversely, he’s seen his own team win games they weren’t supposed to. For this team, Swinney wants to combine the hardships of the last few years with the expectations his program continues to carry.

“We're best in the country at home for the last 13 years,” Swinney said. “And that's because you create consistency in your preparation. It can't matter. And that's hard. That's not an easy thing to establish. It is hard. These are kids, and there's a lot going on on the outside that can really distract you and you have to show up and play every single week. And that's why we talk about playing to a standard. You don't play to an opponent. You don't play to a record. Like last week, they were 1-4. You get caught up in that. We've won a lot of games we weren't supposed to win. We've won a lot of those too. I've been on both sides of it.”

Clemson has regained some of its national respect, ascending into the top ten in the AP Poll.

For Swinney, he knows five games doesn’t make a championship team.

With Wake Forest on the horizon (Saturday noon/ESPN), he knows it's another opportunity for growth. He knows it is hard to win, and the chaos of the weekend was the perfect example of how things can quickly change.

“It's hard to win,” Swinney said. “It's harder to win consistently, and it's tough to win when you're supposed to win because you got other teams that pay attention to all these things too. And everybody has good coaches, and there's a lot of parity in college football. So for us, man, it's a big message coming off a really good win on the road. We're just four and one. I mean, we haven't done anything. I mean, we're just four and one. That's it.

"All we've done is create some opportunity for ourselves, but we got a long way to go. We have to stay locked in and have a great day today. We just need to try to find a way to keep building some momentum.”