Everything Dabo Swinney said about Georgia following Clemson’s blowout loss

Dabo Swinney met with the media following Clemson’s 34-3 loss to Georgia.

The longtime Clemson head coach gave plenty of credit to Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs.

“First of all, congrats to Georgia,” Swinney said in his opening statement. “Tough, hard-fought first half.It was a good first half. 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.”

Swinney took ownership as the Tigers’ head coach but also made sure to continue to mention how the Bulldogs were more prepared.

“Biggest thing, when you get beat like that, that’s on the head coach. That’s on me, so,” Swinney said. “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.”

Swinney noted that in order to beat a team of that caliber, you can’t miss the small opportunities throughout a game.

“With a team like Georgia, where they are right now, you’ve got to take advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves,” Swinney said. “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 tackle. Something I was worried about coming into the game. But missed tackles, third-and-long.”

Carson Beck was clearly a major focal point for the Tigers defense preparing for the matchup, and Swinney pointe out how well he played.

“Another thing I was worried about was their quarterback,” Swinney said. “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.”

The Clemson coach also noted his team missed key tackles and continued to stress that his offense

I think they capitalized on a couple, we miss-fit a couple of their runs,” Swinney said. “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.

“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 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.”

Swinney admitted the Tigers were exposed by the Bulldogs.

“When you play a team like Georgia, you get exposed,” Swinney said. “That’s what happened in the second half. Again, there’s a lot of good things in the first half that we’ll see. Then all of a sudden third-and-long, big play, boom, big play. This is a really good team. They’re well-coached. Kirby did a great job, has done a great job. They kicked our butt tonight.”

Clemson will host App State in Week 2.

Sean Labar

Sean Labar is an SEC football contributor for Saturday Down South.