Swinney excited about a night game in Death Valley, puts eyes forward to App St.

Swinney speaks to the media Tuesday.

David Hood · Senior Writer · Tuesday, September 03 2024

CLEMSON – Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is looking ahead to a night game in Death Valley.

Clemson has moved on to this week’s home game against Appalachian St., an 8 pm kickoff (ACCN).

“We're excited to have a new week and get back at it this week and super excited about playing here at home. Night game in the Valley is special and we truly get seven of these days a year and this is one of them,” Swinney said during his weekly press conference. “Finally here. We work all year to have these opportunities, and we had a great start to the week yesterday with our guys and eyes forward on a really tough App St. team. They’re coming off a good win. And Coach (Shawn) Clark is a guy that I know a little bit. He came down here and visited several years ago and had a chance to meet him a little bit then. But good football team.”

The Mountaineers defeated ETSU 38-10 last weekend and have a history of knocking off Power Five programs.

“Listen, I think the first thing when you talk about App State is they're just who they are programmatically, culturally,” Swinney said. “They've had three years in a row where they've had a top 25 win, so this is what they expect to do. That's just woven into the DNA of App St. It doesn't matter where they go, they expect to win. And so that's been instilled in them for a long time and definitely have our full attention. But looking at their personnel offensively, they're a true zone read type of team with a quarterback who creates option principles.

“You pull it, and then you're throwing it off of the pull, and that's what you see a lot of that. So that creates real true option. Principles may not be an option, but it's a pull, a run and a throw. So it really stresses you have to really keep your eyes on your work, really be disciplined and that's an area we definitely have to improve from this past week for sure. But the quarterback (Joey Aguilar), I mean, he's special. He holds just about every record that you can have up there at App State, at quarterback, and they've had a lot of great quarterbacks, so got a lot of respect for him. Got three really good receivers that he distributes the ball to.

“And then over on the defensive side, they present some challenges. They were one of the best teams in the country last year in creating turnovers, which is an area that we've got to get on track this week. I thought we did take care of the ball well last week. I know we had one pick that was a great play. But those things will happen, but defensively we got to go get 'em. And so that's an area that we've got to come out on top this week with these guys. But biggest thing for us again is just cleaning up some of the details, some of the mistakes and continuing to play with the type of effort, tougher toughness, physicality that we displayed last week and see if we can find a way to get a W here going into an open date before we get into conference play.”

Following the 34-3 loss to Georgia, Swinney said the Tigers are eyes forward.

“That's our focus. Just getting better this week, eyes forward fully on a tough challenge,” Swinney said. “And then just excited about playing at home and getting a chance the whole month of September to be here at home and hopefully again, grow our team, create some confidence and some rhythm and one day at a time.”

Swinney on his program and principles

“Just foundational principles of what this program's built on. Effort, belief, physicality. Toughness, how you play. It's not where you play, when you play, who you play, what time you play, it's how you play. And if you play the right way, then good things will happen. And this is a team that I think has a chance to really come together and have a heck of a year. I really love this team, man. I'm having a lot of fun coaching 'em, having a lot of fun teaching 'em. It's a close team, it's a close staff, and it's fun. It's fun to come to work. I mean it's more fun when you're coming off a win, that's for sure. But I think the wins are going to come because you play with the right foundational things. The rest of it will come into play. And so that's what I'm talking about, the attitude, the leadership, just foundational things that we built this program on. And that's the thing I probably most encouraged about that I saw in that game the other day.”

On if the program deviated from those principles the last few seasons

“We didn’t necessarily get away from that. I just think you have a lot of young players. We played the most freshmen in the country last year. You're teaching, you're always teaching, and every team is different. You just have opportunities. But I just think that you've got, I mean even, and it is not just for this year, it's for next year. I mean you look at our roster, we don't lose a lot of guys. We don't lose many people. And so, if we can just do things the right the way it needs to be, then the rest of it's going to fall into place for this football team.”