Dabo Swinney and the Clemson Tigers fell to rivals South Carolina 17-14 in front of their home crowd on Saturday in a brutal loss that felt like Clemson handed their in-state rivals the win.
Even so, Clemson’s season isn’t over. Syracuse did the job for the Tigers’ taking down Miami and sending the Tigers to an ACC Championship. A team that almost threw away their season gets one more chance at the College Football Playoff.
To make a run at the playoff and win the ACC Championship, the Tigers will need to learn from their mistakes. To do so, they’ll have to watch the South Carolina game tape and see where they went wrong, something that won’t be pretty for Swinney. However, that won’t be happening soon as Swinney was asked about getting together with the team and watching it back.
“No,” Swinney said, shaking his head. “No. No. No. Everybody is pissed. There is a lot of disappointment. There is no gathering. We did not get the job done today.
“I’ll watch it to see what happens, but whatever God has for us, He has for us,” he said. “That is how I look at it. We will know our next step here pretty soon. Then we will pick ourselves up, dust off and see if we can go finish the way we want to finish. Then learn and grow from everything this year and see if we can get better next year.”
Clemson will need to learn from their mistakes, as gave away the game on Saturday.