Clemson’s Dabo Swinney talks offense, 34-game home win streak after Wake Forest rout
For the 13th straight year, Clemson defeated Wake Forest.
This time, it was via a 48-27 decision as the 10th-ranked Demon Deacons were dealt their first loss of ACC play and the Tigers extended their home winning streak to 34 games.
Here’s what Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney, who also celebrated his 52nd birthday on Saturday, said after the win.
On the 34-game winning streak at Memorial Stadium: “It’s a historic day. Five years in a row, we were undefeated at home. I hope, if anything comes from this season, people can appreciate what’s happened at Clemson over the previous years and how hard it is to win, especially the way these teams have won over the years. Five years in a row, undefeated at home, that’s just unbelievable. I’ve never been a part of that. Back-to-back senior classes walking out of here undefeated for the first time since 1941, there’s a reason why it’s been that long because it’s unthinkable in today’s football. It’s hard to win, so I’m just proud of our seniors.”
On WR E.J. Williams injury: “Wednesday, we’re in 7-on-7. E.J.’s lined up and he just runs a route and he comes back. He was a little tight on his alignment, so he goes to widen out and went down like a sniper took him out. Dadgumest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Out like, ‘What just happened?’ It’s not going to be surgical but he has some type of, it’s almost like a pulled muscle, they call it. Kind of on the back of the hammy-knee area. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t even know how to explain it. That’s what happened. … No, I ain’t got nothing (on a timetable). I’m just hoping we have 11 to show up next week.”
On running back Will Shipley’s touchdown pass play to Davis Allen: Somewhere, Travis Etienne is not happy with me right now. I’ve had that in there for five years. It’s even called ‘Bayou’ for where Travis is from, the bayou. Just never had the right opportunity to call it. Today was the day. What a play. Shipley gets it up there. It’s just kind of a pop pass-jump ball. You’re trying to affect them (defense) with a little quarterback motion there, but it was a great play and a great finish.”
On the offense finally breaking through: “You see what happens when you can get in a rhythm a little bit. You’ve got to play well up front, first of all. We had a few spark plays where we just made a few of those plays, a big play by Davis Allen. The crazy play to Beaux was just how we drew it up: (D.J. Uiagalelei) break two sacks, roll out to the right, rip it 60 yards and it’s just how we drew it up. You need some of that along the way, and we hadn’t had much of that. I thought he held the ball a little too long on that play because I thought we had enough time but what a play. Good thing he’s 250-ish pounds because he’s strong enough to break those tackles and Beaux stayed alive. He’s got a big enough arm to make that play. It’s just good to see us make a couple of plays like that, but we just were able to create rhythm. Seven of 11 on third down, it just creates some confidence as you go. Then a couple of the pass plays early were big for us. I thought the one to Davis Allen was big on the post there and then being able to be balanced with the run game was huge for us.”
On the defense attacking Wake Forest’s backfield: “There may be people that try but not many people can do it. That’s just our mentality. We don’t want to sit at the line of scrimmage. We had the right mindset of truly creating a new line of scrimmage and putting them in the quarterback’s lap. … I just thought we did a great job of winning that battle and shortening the time and disrupting their rhythm and affecting them. It was just an awesome, awesome day. We had great push. A couple of times (Wake Forest quarterback Sam Hartman) got outside of us and extended a couple plays, but we did a really good job of making him uncomfortable. It started early, and then we didn’t give them anything in the run game to hang onto. They popped a couple. I think they had 36 total yards rushing, so they popped a couple here or there but we took that away.”
This story was originally published November 20, 2021 at 6:39 PM.
