Second-ranked Clemson’s defense showed up ready to play Saturday afternoon at Death Valley as it held Georgia Southern to just 140 total yards of offense in the Tigers’ 38-7 victory.
Defensive end Clelin Ferrell led the way with seven tackles along with two sacks and 2.5 tackles-for-loss.
Ferrell on Georgia Southern’s triple-option
“It was good to good out there and have a successful day against a triple-option team. You know that’s our second time playing against something like that. But I feel like that’s going to give us great momentum going into the team I feel like runs it the best which is Georgia Tech.”
Ferrell on distraction of hurricane talk this week
“No, not at all. We felt like the whole week, Coach (Dabo Swinney) was talking about how we’ll line up and play whenever. We could’ve lined up and played Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday morning. It didn’t matter. We feel like we were ready to play, had a great week of preparation. We could’ve played whenever.”
Ferrell on ACC play beginning
“Definitely, done with the first quarter of the season. Now we are starting ACC play which is going to be huge. We’re onto our next goal which is to win the division. So it’s going to be big to go win it and hopefully get a head start on it with Georgia Tech.”
Ferrell on improvements
“I mean I guess your confidence can only go up if you feel like you played well. So I guess it helped us as a defense that we went out there and played well. As a team we feel like we definitely got better in a lot of different aspects. We still feel like we aren’t a championship team yet. We have a long way to go. But it was good to go out there and see a lot of improvements from the last time we played a team like this.”
Ferrell on Clemson’s defense
“Any time you can get five sacks against a triple-option team, man that’s huge. We had some good hits on the quarterback. Obviously we were in kind of a bind with that turnover right there, then they did that trick play, that was tough. Even though they got to the red zone with that big play and we feel like we have to stop them, but anytime you get five sacks and put pressure on the quarterback like that it’s huge.”
