Clemson safety Tanner Muse on receiving a tongue-lashing from Dabo

Clemson safety Tanner Muse made one of the biggest plays of the game for the Tigers against Syracuse, but instead of receiving praise for the play when he returned to the sideline, he got a talking to from coach Dabo Swinney.

With Clemson trailing 14-7 midway through the second quarter, Muse picked up a fumble and returned it 63 yards for a score to tie the game at 14.

But as the sophomore celebrated in the end zone he made a hand gesture that resulted in a 15-yard penalty and led to a tongue-lashing from Swinney.

Muse is hoping to use the incident as a learning experience and turn it into a positive.

“It was an immature move on my part what I did. It won’t happen again,” he said Monday. “Being able to take that moment and make something positive out of it, other guys on the team are going to learn from it, and I am definitely going to learn from it. So I think it was not all negative even though it was a negative play.”

Muse added that you can’t get frustrated or tune out Swinney when he is upset with you on the sideline, you just have to take what he is saying and not make the same mistake again.

“You sit and take it. You learn from it, and you listen to all the words he has to say,” Muse said. “At that time, he’s telling it how it is, and he’s saying it from the heart. In the end, you do what you can with it constructively.”