After a two-hour rain delay, Clemson found itself staring at a 17-3 hole and still somehow walked out with a 28-20 win over North Carolina. The Tigers flipped the script by outscoring the Tar Heels 22-6 after halftime, and Dabo Swinney came away convinced his team had taken a real step forward.
“Man, I just love my team,”Swinney said after the emotional comeback victory over North Carolina. “They got down 17-3 and they never quit and kept battling.
That’s what football is. I told them, I said, 'We got eight minutes.
Don't worry about anything that’s happened. Let’s just play this play.
Let’s go win second down. Let’s win third down.
Let’s go score.' They grew up.”
The comeback was a full-team effort, but Swinney was especially struck by true freshman quarterback Tait Reynolds, who was making his first career start. Reynolds struggled before halftime, then settled in after the break and helped steady Clemson’s offense.
“How about this quarterback? He was pretty bad in the first half and did a couple things in the second, but what a competitor,” Swinney said of Reynolds in his first career start for Clemson.
“You saw a kid grow up tonight. He’s going to be a problem for a long time and he ain’t going to do nothing but get better.”
Clemson is now 2-1 overall and 1-0 in conference play, and its next trip comes Friday night on the road against California.
The win also gave Swinney and his staff a chance to reset the tone around this team. Clemson was flat in the first half, but it kept fighting and found a way to turn the game into something much bigger than a shaky start. The Tigers are still not a finished product, but they have improved each week.
What stood out most was the toughness. A long weather delay could have knocked Clemson off course.
Instead, the pause seemed to help the Tigers gather themselves and come back sharper. Against a North Carolina team that is better than it was a year ago, Clemson showed a level of grit it had not displayed in quite some time.
The next stretch will tell plenty more. Clemson heads to Cal and then returns home for Miami, and neither game figures to come easy. But for one night, Swinney had reason to believe his team was starting to look like itself again.
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