Clemson Tigers College Football Pregame Quote, 12/13/2020

Good to be with you all tonight we’re super excited. I mean, this is, you know what it’s all about this is what we all work toward every single year. This is one of our major goals to try to you know win our league, and you know win the division, and so I don’t know what we call it our division. We won half the league, so whatever we’re calling it this year.

We’re just excited to be in Charlotte, have a chance to compete for the overall championship and it’s been a great year, just really proud of our team to be at this point. This has been one of a kind, hope I can coach for a long time, but I doubt I’ll ever be a part of another year like 2020. Unbelievable what these teams have had to deal with and all these players.

So just proud of our team, our staff, everybody involved in our organization in working to get to this point, but especially our players. And also really excited for Notre Dame, and congratulations to coach Kelly and his staff and their entire team, what a magical year they’ve had. I mean just a great football team, a complete team, in every sense of the word, and you know they’ve been fun to watch. Obviously, we had a great game with them earlier in the year and they made a few more plays than we did.

I think the two best teams have earned the opportunity to go to Charlotte and play for the overall championship, and so it’s going to be exciting. Really looking forward to it on behalf of our President (James Clements) and Dan Radakovich, our AD. It’s an honor to be able to bring our team up there and compete in what I know is going to be an incredible college football game for everybody to see.

Dabo, going through the last game against Notre Dame…how did Trevor handle that? What kind of emotions did you see him go through and what was the value do you think of having him there on the sideline for you guys even though he was not able to actually get on the field of play?

Just his presence. I thought he was great for D.J. (Uiagalelei) and I thought he was just a calming influence on the sideline for D.J. and just an encouraging voice. He’s an inspirational guy, so it was great to have him there and he’s a very, very smart guy, you know he sees the game from a quarterback perspective. But also, I wanted him to get the experience. I know he won’t be here when we go back to Notre Dame, I guess in 2022, we go back up there maybe and you know I wanted him to have the opportunity to make that trip with us. He was about a day or so away from being able to play. But, glad he was able to come.

Coach, what was the main message to your team last week? It’s kind of unusual to have that week off in between the end of the regular season and the ACC Championship Game, what was your message to the team and what were the one or two key things that you wanted to concentrate on during the time off?

I think in the previous seven times we’ve been in the championship game, we’ve never had an open date, so that’s just how we treated it, like an open date. We’ve been going, this is our 20th week coming up, we’ve been going 20 weeks of football. That’s a long time. It’s been managing a lot, these guys have been through a lot. So, the biggest thing was, we’re going to treat it like an open date.

We had finals going on as well, so we had to really navigate around that. We practiced Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and we had meetings on Tuesday. So, the objective was to get a good head start, get a good foundation to our plan for Notre Dame, and also get healthy. Get some rest. Again, we’ve been going 20 weeks, certainly don’t want to overdo it, trying to want to peak too soon and those things, but we had a bunch of tests on Friday and then they had yesterday off and then we’re back in here today. So, we’ve had testing today, dinner and then we just got meetings this evening and then we’ll start a normal game week tomorrow. Obviously, it’s like coming off of an open date, you’re a lot further along than you would be, if you just played a game yesterday, so it was a great week. Good focus, the guys are excited and looking forward to a great matchup.‚Äù

Coach, I was wondering if you could look back when you found out that Notre Dame was a full member this year. What reaction you had to that and then now that it’s about six months removed from that and how this experiment went with having Notre Dame as a full member of the league?

They’ve been a full member in every sport but football, so that it’s been kind of the norm for the last few years, and then they’ve been playing I guess around five games a year in our league so they’ve been a pretty, pretty steady out of conference opponent, if you will. I think it was great.

It certainly was a unique year, and everybody going conference only and canceling games and things like that, so I think Notre Dame certainly brings a lot to the table from a football standpoint. They’re a great program. They’re a great brand. Awesome tradition, a lot of respect for Notre Dame. So, the powers that be got together; Notre Dame, you know all of a sudden their schedule’s gone, they needed games and, you know, our league wanted them to join the league, for a year at least. That’s what they came up, so I think it’s been good. You know it’s exciting. I think we had one of the most watched games, maybe in a long time, this season especially in the first game, and I’ll be shocked if this ones, not even better. So, it’s been good for college football. It’s been good for our league and hopefully it’s been good for Notre Dame, who knows what they’ll do going forward but it’s been a good year.

Hey Coach, how did Jake Venables’ surgery go the other day and do you still think he probably will not play this Saturday and also how did Justin Ross’ visit with his doctor go?

Yeah, Jake’s definitely gonna be out, he broke a bone kind of long bone right here (on his arm). He had a plate put in and I think he had nine screws in there, so he’s gonna be a still pretty sore. He’s going to come back stronger than ever, but he’s definitely gonna be out.

But it was a great trip for Justin. We’re still waiting on a couple of bits of information from the doctor up there. But it was a very positive trip. There’s basically, where he is right now there’s kind of, I guess two big boxes that have to be checked for him for them to, say, alright, go get it. But I think they were very pleased with what they saw and, the first big box is this test that they put him through I want to say kinematic or kinematic testing. Basically, measuring his movements before surgery and now post-surgery. They were very pleased with the healing of the area, still not quite 100% but it’s, I think ahead of what they could have expected. So I think, just that first thing he’s in first box and the kinematic test, I think he’s in a pretty good place and then they, they just want to see 100% healing. You know, when he goes back but it was very positive and very thankful for that. He’s in good spirits and hopefully, you know, just continue to move forward in a positive way.

And I’ll tell you, I just can’t say enough about Dr Okonkwo, the job he’s done. He’s an amazing doctor and Justin’s got a lot of confidence in him, and he’s got a lot of confidence in himself and again, if y’all could see Justin everyday practice, it’s unbelievable. He does everything, except get tackled. He looks great in practice, and you know doing all the things that they allow him to do is in full pads. Again, he doesn’t get hit, or anything like that. He’s not in competitive situations but does all the routes and drill work and those type of things and he looks great. But you know his injury is one that that we’re going to be very cautious with and hopefully, he’ll keep moving in a very positive direction and he’ll get a full release somewhere in the near future.

Having faced Notre Dame already this year, how would you measure their growth from the team that you faced in 2018, the growth in their program? And then the second part is, win or lose this weekend, do you feel like these are two of the best four teams in the country, and playoff worthy?

They were a great team in ’18, I mean a great team. If you go back and look at that game, we made a few explosives that kind of separated it and then once we kind of got to lead it was our defense that kind of won the day there. Book was, I guess, a couple years younger and all these big monster offensive linemen they got, that are all like graduates now, they were a couple years younger, so we were kind of the reverse. We had all those all those vets in the D line and they were a little younger and this year it’s kind of the opposite.