Tigers don’t have to be perfect to win
By: will-vandervort December 1, 2015

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney says all the turnovers the last couple of weeks are a huge concern, but there is a silver lining – the Tigers are still 12-0.

“The good news is we are 12-0 so that means we don’t have to play perfect to win,” Swinney said on Tuesday during his weekly press conference. “That’s a positive. Yeah, it stinks. I don’t like losing the turnover margin. Typically, if you have at least two more big plays than your opponent, and you win the turnover margin, you win 98 percent of the time.

“If you look across the country and the team that lost the turnover margin two or three times has lost 16 percent of the time. Yet, we are undefeated and it has happened to us six times. I don’t recommend that.”

Clemson is the only team in the last decade in college football to lose the turnover margin by at least two, and still win all six games. No other team that has done that has won more than three games.

“I told our staff and I told our team, and I have a lot of young coaches, never ever, ever, ever again in the history of my coaching career, or any of these guys on my staff, will we ever go 12-0 again if we lose the turnover margin six times,” Swinney said. “That is never going to happen again. We need to track that. That is just unheard of, but the positive in that is that we do not have to play perfect.”

Swinney says they will talk about the turnovers and make it a point of emphasis this week, but he doesn’t want it to detract from how they play.

“Look at how some of them happened. We have guys fighting for that extra inch. You know, I can live with that. There is nothing wrong with that extra want to,” he said. “That extra fight – that is why we are 12-0. It’s that mentality that our team has. They are poised, they don’t flinch. We overcome adversity. We have faced just about everything we can face and they keep playing.”

Clemson (12-0) has turned the football over in all but one of its 12 games this year, including a season-high three against Georgia Tech, Syracuse and South Carolina.

“The turnover margin is a critical piece to winning games,” said co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott. “We drill it in practice and we will continue to do that. The biggest thing is not to panic. We are not going to panic with our guys and get our guys playing tight and worrying about those types of things. We just kind of go back to the details and the fundamentals and improve on that this week and protect the ball.”

The Tigers can go nowhere but up. Clemson ranks 107th nationally in turnover margin at minus-3 for the season, the defense has forced 21 turnovers.

“When we win the turnover margin, then we are going to blow somebody out,” Swinney said. “If you look at our season this year, the games that we won big, the turnover margin we did pretty well.”

In their bigger games this year—Louisville, Notre Dame, Miami, NC State and Florida State—the Tigers won or tied in the turnover margin and came out of those five games with a plus-7 margin.

Clemson cannot afford to lose the turnover margin this week against the Tar Heels. North Carolina (11-1) has committed just 15 turnovers this season and ranks 16th nationally in turnover margin at plus-9.

“Those things go in cycles,” Swinney said.