Dabo pushes back on narrative after '1 bad year'

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — Clemson tied a program record with nine NFL draft selections last month, reigniting conversations about how the Tigers finished 7-6 last season with a roster that talented.

In his first comments since the draft, coach Dabo Swinney said Monday from ACC spring meetings in Amelia Island, “It’s pretty well documented we grossly underachieved last year. That isn’t a news flash.

“We just keep beating that dead horse to death. We’re onto the new season. We grossly underachieved and underperformed and did not coach and play to our potential. We’ve had other seasons where we had nobody drafted and won 10-plus games. That’s football.

“It didn’t work last year. If you do this long enough, you can have a year where it just doesn’t work. I don’t care if you’re Roy Williams or Coach K or Dabo Swinney, it doesn’t matter. It’s what you do moving forward. But I think perspective is important.”

Swinney said he does not push back on the criticism or disappointment from last season, when the Tigers were the preseason pick to win the ACC and a popular choice to make the College Football Playoff. But he also pointed out what Clemson has accomplished — including ranking No. 7 in the country in wins this decade.

“The narrative of our program, it’s just not accurate,” Swinney said. “If we go have a bunch of bad years, that’s different, but we’ve had one bad year in 15 years. Ten wins is not a bad year. Eleven wins is not a bad year.

“We wrote a bad chapter, but we’re still writing, and the lesson in all of that is it’s not about what people predict, it’s not about what people say. It’s about what you do. We’ve had many years where we were predicted to stink that we were good, and we’ve had a couple years that we predicted to be pretty good, and we stunk.”

Swinney also said he believes Clemson is in a good spot with what it has spent on its roster, maxing out the revenue sharing number while adding NIL opportunities on top of that.

He also added context to an interview he did last week with Greg McElroy on his “Always College Football” podcast — in which he said Notre Dame “prints its own money.”

“That was my comment the other day,” Swinney said. “All of a sudden I’m getting hate mail from people. We have enough. I was just making a point we never had the same as this school and this school if we met at the middle of the field and compared budgets and alumni bases and total revenues, and five-stars, recruiting rankings — we’d lose every time. You’ve got to have enough, and then it’s about putting it together.

“We may not have a $45 million roster like some teams, but we’ve got enough. We’ve just got to be good with it. We’ve got to be strategic.”