Trevor Lawrence stands in front of teammates to deliver impassioned speech

Lawrence stands in the pocket against FSU.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Mon Oct 14 07:01:02 GMT-04:00 2019

CLEMSON – Dabo Swinney wanted to see Trevor Lawrence to become more of a vocal leader this season, and a speech the sophomore quarterback made to the team this week resonated with his teammates.

Lawrence stuck his head in a defensive huddle two weeks ago at North Carolina to cheer on his teammates, and then spoke up at a team meeting this week.

The Tigers came out and struck early and often in a dominating 45-14 victory over Florida State Saturday, and Lawrence told the media following the game that it was the kind of effort Clemson was looking for.

“The way we played two weeks ago, we wanted to prove that we can play better than we did. We have high expectations of ourselves, just like other people do. We just wanted to play well,” Lawrence said. “I think so (that it was the best game so far). I thought we were really efficient and executed well. We felt confident. Probably every play we called we were confident we could do something with it.”

The week started with Lawrence imploring his teammates to make sure every day counts.

“Coach Swinney does some random things in meetings, like he will ask people if they have anything to say and a couple of guys stand up,” Lawrence said. “I told the guys, 'Don't waste a day. At most, we have three months of the season left, and you are going to look back and if you didn't do the things you could have done you are going to have some regrets.' That is the thing that I wanted to tell them. Don't waste a day. In three months we will get a break and we can just relax and re-think everything. But for right now let's go to work and take it every step and take advantage of it.”

The speech preceded two good weeks of practice.

“Definitely. We have some good weeks. Charlotte we had a good week of prep,” Lawrence said. “But this was a great week, especially because it was two weeks, so I felt like every practice was good. I don't think we had a bad practice. We had some really good practices.”

Despite the dominant win, the Tigers dropped a spot in the AP Poll and Lawrence said he knows some people nationally still lack respect for what Clemson has accomplished.

“It's true. We got to the top of the mountain last year and then we are ranked No. 1,” he said. “And then we have a close game - we didn't play great so I can see why we got moved - but it's more fuel to the fire. We can bring back the ROY bus. It's awesome.”