Dabo Swinney on Clemson’s home struggles: ‘We’ve stunk’

If the length of time a coach talks about a topic in a given press conference is any indicator of how important it is, then Dabo Swinney has honed in on one thing that must happen for Clemson football. It must retake home field advantage.

Swinney spent more than four straight minutes discussing that topic with reporters when pressed on the team’s two home losses this season. He’s ready to flip the script as the Tigers get set to host SMU on Saturday.

“Yeah, we’ve stunk. I mean we’ve lost three out of our last four games at home,” Swinney said. “I know last year was a different team, but this team, we’ve not done well. You’ve got to (give credit); they’re good teams.

“LSU‘s a good team. It’s not like they stink, but we had a chance to win the game and didn’t make some of the plays that were there. And we didn’t play well offensively, mostly, in that game. Then the Syracuse game we just didn’t even start playing defense till the third quarter. So, again, give them credit.”

The good news is Clemson does appear to be turning things around. Time will tell whether that holds true at home.

But it should be easier there. And the last two times out have featured big Tigers wins in ACC play away from home.

“Yeah, we really didn’t play well in any game until North Carolina,” Swinney said. “Collectively. We’ve had some players play well every week. It’s just been kind of all right, ‘tag, you’re it.’ So we just haven’t played well as a team.

“They’ve had two good games and they’ve played really well, complimentary football. So now we’ve got to … we’ve gone from Chapel Hill to Chestnut Hill, now we’re back on The Hill. And we need to keep playing well.”

The home struggles for Clemson are certainly an aberration. The Tigers have been downright impossible to take down at home during various stretches under Swinney.

“I mean it ain’t ever been that way, even as bad as we’ve been here in this little stretch I think we’re still probably top three in the nation in home wins in the last, I don’t know, 12, 13, 14 years or so,” the head coach pointed out. “This is a tough place to play. And every team’s different. I mean every season’s different. Some teams overachieve, some teams underachieve. I just go season by season. And we’ve had a bunch of good seasons and mostly great seasons at home, for sure. Yeah, we’ve got to get back to playing well here.”

Swinney circled back around to just how hard it is to win in college football. That’s some of what Clemson has faced this fall.

LSU remains ranked, while Syracuse has had its moments under coach Fran Brown. Neither game was lopsided, with Clemson losing both by a touchdown.

“Again, I give LSU some credit. I think they’re a pretty good team,” Swinney said. “And then we just kind of got in a funk. Just some of our best players not playing well and just couldn’t kind of bail each other out. You get beat. So that’s college football. I mean you can get beat. It’s hard to win every single week, especially when you don’t play well.

“But it was good, again, for them to just be able to see it these last couple weeks collectively as a group. And hopefully that momentum will carry over in this game. But it ain’t going to get any easier. I mean every game, every game we play good people. It’s a really good team, and we’ve got to play well. If we play well then it shouldn’t matter where we play. I’ve said that since the day I got this job. If you’re only going to win at home, you’re not going to be very good.”

In some ways, it’s got to go back to the roots for Swinney and Clemson. He had established making Clemson a hard place to play as a key goal when he first arrived.

“That was a big goal of mine when I got this job, because we weren’t a great home winning team,” he said. “I mean we were good, but not great. And my 17 years we’ve been great. We’ve been great at home. Great. Not good. We’ve been great. But as of late we’ve stunk. And we got to get that turned around. So how do you do that? Well, you do what winning requires.

“It’s the same stuff. Nothing changes. You’ve got to play well. You’ve got to earn the right to win. You’ve got to take the ball away. You’ve got to create some stops. You’ve got to be explosive. You’ve got to have more big plays than the opponent. You’ve got to be able to run the ball, stop the run. You play with discipline, you play with great effort, you play with physicality, you make some plays in special teams, you don’t have a bunch of stupid penalties.”

No one is going to hand Clemson a win simply because it’s Clemson, though. Of that, Swinney is certain.

“Doesn’t matter where you play, you’ve got to earn the right to win,” he said. “But we’ve got to get back on track. That’s been a real disappointment at this point. Good news is we get some more opportunities. So hopefully we can start a new streak. But we’re going to have to play well. We’ve got to earn it. Ain’t nobody going to come in here and bow down.”