Below is the full transcript of coach Dabo Swinney’s opening statement from his post-game press conference following Clemson’s 34-3 loss to Georgia on Saturday in Atlanta.
“First of all, congrats to Georgia. It was a good first half. Tough, hard-fought first half. Then they just freaking kicked our tails in the second half. Congrats to them. They’re a great team. They’ve been a great team. They showed in the third and fourth quarter what it looks like.
“Just really disappointed. Biggest thing is when you don’t finish, again I’ve talked a lot bit, thought we did some good things in the first half. There will be some things on tape. But you got to play four quarters. We didn’t do that.
“Biggest thing, when you get beat like that, that’s on the head coach. That’s on me, so... That’s just complete ownership of just an absolute crap second half. Really disappointed. But I’ve done it long enough. Sometimes you get your butt kicked, and we did today. That’s not what we came here to do. But you got to give Georgia credit. We got to move on, we got to learn from it.
“Again, biggest thing to me was missed opportunities in the first half. We needed some early momentum. We had made a couple plays. We made a huge play. They said we weren’t lined up right. They said we weren’t quite up on the ball. He thought he was on the ball. You look at the tape, it’s close. That was huge, huge, huge missed opportunity in the first half.
“With a team like Georgia, where they are right now, you’ve got to take advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves. So we didn’t do that in the first half.
“Some critical penalties, just a couple details.
“Then the second half, just defensively really poor. Just really poor. Again, I thought lines of scrimmage, there’s going to be a lot of good stuff we’re going to see on tape, but in the second half just missed tackles. Something I was worried about coming into the game. But missed tackles, third-and-long.
“Another thing I was worried about was their quarterback. I think he showed he’s a really, really good player. He’s incredibly accurate. That’s one of my concerns going into the game, was if we let him hold the ball on third-and-long, he’ll find ‘em. And he did. He made a couple huge plays on third-and-long.
“I think they capitalized on a couple, we missed a couple of their runs. We missed some tackles. That contributed to some of the big plays. Then we just kind of got in a hole there.
“Disappointed offensively on the third-and-one there. Had a little miscommunication. They did fight. They didn’t quit. They battled to the end. Like I said, there will be some good things we see on tape. At the end of the day we just got our butts kicked.
“We’ve got to battle back. It’s a long season ahead. Again, Georgia is a great football team. I have no doubt they’ll go on to have a great year. This is one game. Whether you get your butt kicked or you lose by one point, when you lose, you lose. It’s 0-1. We got to get back to work on Monday, we’ve got to flush it.
“We all learn from it. I don’t shy away from games like this. I don’t ever shy away from games like this. I think when you play games like this, you got a chance to learn, you got a chance to teach. I think you can grow your football team because they get a chance to see right out of the gate.
“We’ll get back to work on Monday. We’ll flush it. I really am proud of our guys in the locker room. Obviously they worked really, really hard. When you put in the amount of work that these guys put in and you don’t get the result, it’s incredibly heartbreaking and disappointing.
“I’m proud of the comments in the locker room, the leadership that I saw. We certainly took one, punched right in the gut. But we’ll respond. We’ll get back to work. Doesn’t get any easier next week. Probably as good of a Group of 5 team in the country coming into the Valley. Sorry for our fans. I feel terrible for them ‘cause we didn’t get it done for them tonight. Didn’t play those last two quarters like we know we can play.
“But I promise you this: we’ll get back to work. Long season ahead. See if we can find a way to have a great Sunday tomorrow, a great Monday, and find a way to get on the other side of this thing and keep going there. One day at a time, one game at a time and we’ll see what happens. But today was not our day, and all the credit goes to Georgia, for sure.”
