Dabo Swinney addresses emotional postgame reaction to Syracuse loss: ‘I feel everybody’s pain’

Dabo Swinney was pretty emotional following Clemson’s 34-21 loss to Syracuse at home Saturday. You could visibly see it on his face while with his players on the field following the game.

Swinney has had impassioned defenses of his program, his coaching and previous success. He had quite the rant this week saying if Clemson was tired of winning, they could get rid of him and he’ll go coach somewhere else and not take up the beach life.

Unfortunately for Swinney and Clemson, they’re now 1-3 on the season and the College Football Playoff looks like an impossible task this year. Swinney opened up on why he was emotional following the Tigers’ latest loss.

“It hurt. I’m human, I’m not a cyborg. This is my life, man,” Swinney said. “I’ve been here 23 years, I love this place. I give this place the very best I’ve got every single day. There’s never been a day when I haven’t given Clemson every ounce I have. I’m hurt. I invested my life here. If I don’t get the job done, I feel responsible. I feel the pain — not just mine, I feel everybody’s.

“That comes with my job, I don’t run from that, at all. I’ve been in these situations many times. I’ve had a lot of great days and this is a very, very low day. But I also know that we’ll get through it. There will be a lot more great days. Nobody wants to hear that in this moment, but that’s what drives me, being able to look back at moments in my life and in my career and knowing we got through it, we got better. There’s a lot of great days ahead. I just hurt because I take pride in what I do. I hurt for our team, our fans and I certainly feel that.”

With the way the schedule shapes up, Clemson isn’t out of the ACC picture, thus perhaps the CFP picture. But it’s going to take, in all likelihood, an eight-game winning streak to even have a shot.

“Well, we’ll find out. I don’t know. If that fourth quarter was any indication, I’d say so,” Swinney said of keeping the guys bought in. “They competed every second. I was proud of them. We got in too big of a hole and we just can’t seem to put it all together when we need it. And now two games in a row, we’re down two in the turnover margin. Those guys love Clemson, I know that.

“We’ve got to process it and get back to work Monday. I think the open date is probably coming at a good time for a lot of reasons. We gotta just put our arms around each other, stay together and let’s get back to work. That’s all we can do. These guys are great competitors. We’ll see.”