Dabo Swinney didn’t hide from Clemson’s mess on Saturday night. By halftime against Virginia Tech, with the Tigers trailing 10-3, the Clemson head coach was already putting the loss on his own side of the sideline.
“It’s all coaching,” he said at halftime. “That’s 100% coaching.
Pitiful. . .that ain’t the players. That’s us.”
That sentiment carried through the rest of the night as Clemson fell 20-16 to the Hokies at Memorial Stadium, a defeat that included 10 unanswered points from Virginia Tech in the fourth quarter and handed the Tigers their second ACC loss of the season. Clemson’s only quarter with multiple scores came in the third, when it finally found a rhythm after the break and scored on all three possessions.
Swinney said the offense looked more manageable for true freshman quarterback Tait Reynolds once the staff simplified things. He pointed to the contrast between the first half and the second half, when Clemson trimmed away some of the clutter and moved the ball more cleanly.
“There was a couple of those in the first half where I just feel like we could have helped him,” he said, “and then we came out in the second half and we took some of those things away. . .and it was very effective.”
Before that turnaround, the Tigers were stuck in mud. Clemson managed just 27 passing yards and 67 rushing yards in the first half, entering the locker room with fewer than 100 total yards and not much to show for its drives.
After the game, Swinney kept coming back to the same point: his staff didn’t put the team in enough winning situations. The scoreboard, he said, reflected that.
“I just don’t think we helped them enough to win the game,” he said. “There were some decisions, some play calls, we didn’t help them at all.”
The third quarter briefly flipped the script. Clemson piled up 146 total yards and scored on each of its first three possessions out of the halftime break. Two of those drives ended in field goals, but the Tigers also used their defense to help create offense and grabbed their first lead of the game.
Still, the finish slipped away. Virginia Tech leaned on penalties to mount an 11-play, 69-yard drive and retake the lead, and Clemson never answered the 10 points the Hokies scored in the fourth quarter.
Swinney also said the turnover margin was part of the problem, and he put that on coaching too.
“We had a couple opportunites to take the ball away,” he said. “Didn’t get it done, and didn’t win the turnover margin even, coming in that was kind of the No. 1 thing for me.”
Clemson is now 4-3 and on the outside looking in when it comes to the ACC Championship race. The Tigers head to Florida State on Halloween night needing a response, but October has already brought a string of coaching concerns into sharper focus.
For Swinney, the message was simple. The players fought. The staff didn’t do enough.
“Those kids played their butts off. They competed their tails off,” he said. “Yeah, they made some mistakes, but we didn’t help them win the game.”
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