Clemson HC Dabo Swinney Says Bad Days Happen to Everybody
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The Clemson Tigers will not feel sorry for themselves after losing 51-10 to LSU on Saturday night in the worst loss in Dabo Swinney's long tenure as head coach.
The Tigers will prepare to host Georgia Southern on Saturday, a chance for Clemson to tinker with the quarterback position and offense after a horrifying display in Baton Rouge in Week 1.
During a radio appearance on Monday, Swinney admitted that going undefeated wasn't necessarily in Clemson's mindset this season. He noted that bad days happen to football teams.
"I just think it's a terrible mindset to have," Swinney said, via Jackson Castellano of the Post and Courier. “We're not going to go undefeated every year. How many times has that happened in the history of 130 years?
"And in today's college football, there's not going to be many teams that, somewhere, don't have a loss or have a bad day. … We work all year for 12 days, and that's a bad day. And so you pick yourself up and you get back in the fight and you learn. Let's go get better next week."
The Indiana Hoosiers won the national championship by going 16-0 last season. Michigan won the national championship in 2015 by going 15-0.
Undefeated seasons happen, but a 12-team format allows for programs to have some margin of error and still compete for a national championship.
As for Clemson, the unranked Tigers don't belong in the CFP conversation in Week 2. The result on Saturday night might have been stunning in scope, but it wasn’t surprising to watch Clemson being blown out by a much better LSU roster.
What's more concerning is how inept Clemson looked against LSU. The defense struggled with tackling. The offense managed 105 passing yards. The run game totaled 40 yards on 26 attempts.
Clemson will have to show serious improvement to just finish in the top half of the ACC this year. There were plenty of questions about the offense heading into the season, and there are even more before offensive coordinator Chad Morris gets to Week 2.
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