Hope everyone out there is doing well on this Tuesday afternoon. Another interesting and entertaining press conference from Dabo Swinney, the third in the past seven days.
So over that span we've heard him mention the Pope, the Popemobile, ticketless Jesus, lugubrious, a determined weed that managed to overcome all the odds in the upper deck of Death Valley, BYOG, and a Beaver Award. Did we miss anything?
In all seriousness, there's definitely been an edge to Swinney's past two gatherings with the media (after Saturday's game, and then today). He chided the media for talking about how great Notre Dame was last week. He laughed at the pregame take that Clemson was going to have a hard time running the ball. And he blasted conventional media narratives, such as the question last year about how Clemson would recover from a devastating loss to Florida State (the Tigers went on to win nine of their last 10), or the pervasive pessimism about their chances with Cole Stoudt in the bowl game against Oklahoma (they won by 34).
On the surface it might not make much sense that Swinney spent 16 days talking about how great Notre Dame was, only to call out the media for ... talking about how great Notre Dame was.
But I think back to the summer, when Swinney was talking about how many important guys were lost from last year. He loved the talent he had returning, but he didn't know about the leadership. He also didn't know how the Tigers would handle the immense success that's come with wins over Oklahoma, Ohio State, Georgia and so on. A big part of this past offseason was preserving that edginess and the chip on the shoulder that helped fuel the Tigers to a lot of those victories. And I suspect that the recent tone from Swinney is in part predicated on that desire to keep his guys hungry. When Nick Saban goes off on a rant in a press conference, he doesn't give a flying flip about the people asking the questions or even the fans. He's talking to his players. The guess here is there's at least a little of that going on here.
Swinney also gave some background into the source of his "lugubrious" reference after Saturday's game. What seemed to really tick him off late Saturday night was a topic of laughter today, as he explained how Aaron Taylor's quote on a CBS Sports clip found its way into his hands.
Swinney said Jayron Kearse saw the clip and was steamed about it. Kearse sent it to Swinney and suggested that the clip be the "video of the day" to be shown to the team. Swinney went with it, and he promised his players after the game that he would find a way to work the 10-cent word into his press conference.
Speaking of Kearse, we chatted with him yesterday about the topic of trash talk -- as in, when to do it, when not to do it, and when you're called out for doing too much of it.
Kearse said he didn't hear anything from the coaches last week after the returned fire following Will Fuller's now-infamous "SAVAGE" tweet.
"The coaches didn't say anything to me, so I guess it was all good. We're not going to go out there and disrespect any of our opponents, because we know everybody is capable of beating us if we don't prepare the right way and if we don't go out there and do our job. But if we're out there and somebody is disrespecting us, then we're going to take shots right back at them."
Kearse said the team was in meetings at the team hotel in Anderson when ESPN's "GameDay" panel reveled its picks for the game. But he said Swinney brought it up at the stadium before the game, pointing out the decidedly pro-Irish takes.
"That was something that made the guys amp up a little bit. We felt like we were being disrespected. Everybody felt like Notre Dame was going to come out there and get the 'W,' talking about our front line wasn't good enough and their defensive front was going to maul our offensive front, and their offensive line had a lot of NFL prospects and ours wasn't going to do what we did. But that definitely pumped the guys up, and when we got out there we showed everybody.
"It's just a sign of disrespect. I guess people felt like we were 'Clemsoning,' I guess that's the term that many use? I don't know who came up with it. I wonder what they feel like Clemsoning is now?"
So let me get this straight, Jayron: If someone writes something positive on you, you ignore it. And if it's negative, you pay attention to it?
"Yeah. If it's positive, we see it but we've also know we've got to go out there and prove it right. So we can't really let that get to our heads. Because if we think we're too high, then somebody is going to knock us down and we're going to end up low. But when it's negative, it's definitely something that I look at because I feel like it motivates me. That's just the type of player I am. So if somebody's doubting me, it's definitely going to motivate me to go out there and prove them wrong. And with the things that were said on ESPN throughout the week, the guys saying that on TV and on Twitter and Instagram and things like that, we definitely felt like we had to go out there and prove some people wrong."
-- Touched on this some yesterday, but it's only a matter of time before this offense starts getting going in the passing game. With the offensive line continuing to get better at run blocking, that's going to force defenses to account for that more. That will in turn create more one-on-one matchups on the outside. This offense does miss Mike Williams, but the receiving corps is still fully capable of exploiting those matchups to produce big plays.
A week ago at this time, Swinney was telling the offensive players it was "time to call in the Air Force" in reference to the air assault that was coming against Notre Dame's man coverage. As it turned out, the nasty weather altered that plan to a significant degree. But don't think this staff isn't still banking on attacking people vertically at a high frequency.
That's it for now. We'll have much more later on today.
So over that span we've heard him mention the Pope, the Popemobile, ticketless Jesus, lugubrious, a determined weed that managed to overcome all the odds in the upper deck of Death Valley, BYOG, and a Beaver Award. Did we miss anything?
In all seriousness, there's definitely been an edge to Swinney's past two gatherings with the media (after Saturday's game, and then today). He chided the media for talking about how great Notre Dame was last week. He laughed at the pregame take that Clemson was going to have a hard time running the ball. And he blasted conventional media narratives, such as the question last year about how Clemson would recover from a devastating loss to Florida State (the Tigers went on to win nine of their last 10), or the pervasive pessimism about their chances with Cole Stoudt in the bowl game against Oklahoma (they won by 34).
On the surface it might not make much sense that Swinney spent 16 days talking about how great Notre Dame was, only to call out the media for ... talking about how great Notre Dame was.
But I think back to the summer, when Swinney was talking about how many important guys were lost from last year. He loved the talent he had returning, but he didn't know about the leadership. He also didn't know how the Tigers would handle the immense success that's come with wins over Oklahoma, Ohio State, Georgia and so on. A big part of this past offseason was preserving that edginess and the chip on the shoulder that helped fuel the Tigers to a lot of those victories. And I suspect that the recent tone from Swinney is in part predicated on that desire to keep his guys hungry. When Nick Saban goes off on a rant in a press conference, he doesn't give a flying flip about the people asking the questions or even the fans. He's talking to his players. The guess here is there's at least a little of that going on here.
Swinney also gave some background into the source of his "lugubrious" reference after Saturday's game. What seemed to really tick him off late Saturday night was a topic of laughter today, as he explained how Aaron Taylor's quote on a CBS Sports clip found its way into his hands.
Swinney said Jayron Kearse saw the clip and was steamed about it. Kearse sent it to Swinney and suggested that the clip be the "video of the day" to be shown to the team. Swinney went with it, and he promised his players after the game that he would find a way to work the 10-cent word into his press conference.
Speaking of Kearse, we chatted with him yesterday about the topic of trash talk -- as in, when to do it, when not to do it, and when you're called out for doing too much of it.
Kearse said he didn't hear anything from the coaches last week after the returned fire following Will Fuller's now-infamous "SAVAGE" tweet.
"The coaches didn't say anything to me, so I guess it was all good. We're not going to go out there and disrespect any of our opponents, because we know everybody is capable of beating us if we don't prepare the right way and if we don't go out there and do our job. But if we're out there and somebody is disrespecting us, then we're going to take shots right back at them."
Kearse said the team was in meetings at the team hotel in Anderson when ESPN's "GameDay" panel reveled its picks for the game. But he said Swinney brought it up at the stadium before the game, pointing out the decidedly pro-Irish takes.
"That was something that made the guys amp up a little bit. We felt like we were being disrespected. Everybody felt like Notre Dame was going to come out there and get the 'W,' talking about our front line wasn't good enough and their defensive front was going to maul our offensive front, and their offensive line had a lot of NFL prospects and ours wasn't going to do what we did. But that definitely pumped the guys up, and when we got out there we showed everybody.
"It's just a sign of disrespect. I guess people felt like we were 'Clemsoning,' I guess that's the term that many use? I don't know who came up with it. I wonder what they feel like Clemsoning is now?"
So let me get this straight, Jayron: If someone writes something positive on you, you ignore it. And if it's negative, you pay attention to it?
"Yeah. If it's positive, we see it but we've also know we've got to go out there and prove it right. So we can't really let that get to our heads. Because if we think we're too high, then somebody is going to knock us down and we're going to end up low. But when it's negative, it's definitely something that I look at because I feel like it motivates me. That's just the type of player I am. So if somebody's doubting me, it's definitely going to motivate me to go out there and prove them wrong. And with the things that were said on ESPN throughout the week, the guys saying that on TV and on Twitter and Instagram and things like that, we definitely felt like we had to go out there and prove some people wrong."
-- Touched on this some yesterday, but it's only a matter of time before this offense starts getting going in the passing game. With the offensive line continuing to get better at run blocking, that's going to force defenses to account for that more. That will in turn create more one-on-one matchups on the outside. This offense does miss Mike Williams, but the receiving corps is still fully capable of exploiting those matchups to produce big plays.
A week ago at this time, Swinney was telling the offensive players it was "time to call in the Air Force" in reference to the air assault that was coming against Notre Dame's man coverage. As it turned out, the nasty weather altered that plan to a significant degree. But don't think this staff isn't still banking on attacking people vertically at a high frequency.
That's it for now. We'll have much more later on today.
