Dabo Swinney says he got his "butt out-coached" against Louisville

Sometimes, there isn't much a coach can say to make anyone feel better. That's the position Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was in on Saturday night after his team's brutal 33-21 loss to Louisville.

"Okay, well, first of all, I think you got to congratulate Louisville and Coach, Brohm," he said. "I just thought they did an awesome job. They played a heck of a game in every facet. And so the kids, their kids, played really hard. The quarterback was outstanding. Obviously, the running back was the difference in the game. And we, we did not play anywhere near our best tonight. And it hurts.

"It's a missed opportunity, huge missed opportunity. And we did not, we didn't deserve to win. You know, they absolutely deserve to win. We did not. So you got to give them all the, all the credit. We look like a very poorly coached team tonight, and that's on me, simple as that, I mean, just incredibly disappointed with our performance tonight."

A huge issue for the Tigers was their inability to slow the Louisville ground game. The Cardinals ran for 210 yards on just 27 carries (7.8 yards per rush) and Swinney said that was his team's biggest issue.

"Big plays on defense, you know," he said. "You don't deserve to win when you can't stop the run. I mean, this is that's just, you know what we've always hung our hat on, and we couldn't stop the run tonight. Really poor to average 7.8 per carry, incredibly poor tackling very few punts. We did not affect the quarterback like we wanted to. No sacks. So again, just, you don't deserve to win when people can line up an average 7.8 a carry on you and so just incredibly disappointing."

With the loss, Clemson dropped out of first place in the ACC standings. Now, with Miami and SMU both ahead of them, the Tigers will need help to get to the conference title game and Swinney pointed to that as an unfortunate consequence of the loss.

"Hey, look, we're six and two. We're five and one in the league, and you know, we don't control our destiny anymore," he said. "That's the incredibly disappointing part, because we're right here, and we were in control coming in, and now we're not. But the one thing we do control is how we respond. How we respond. That's what we control. Can't control anything else. We've got to try to find a way to go win the next one. That's the only thing we control."

One decision that drove Clemson fans mad was that Swinney didn't go for a two-point conversion in the third quarter when the Tigers scored to cut the deficit to 13 points. Swinney's explanation won't help ease any frustrations.

"Yeah, anything can happen," he said. "I think we cut it to 12...You consider going for two. We checked, we did, and we talked about it. And, you know, all of our charts, you know, said, go for one right there. And that's what we did. But we certainly checked and triple-checked and talked it out. You know, all of our, all of our people on both sides, those are decisions we kind of all make sure we're on the same page."

Another criticism from the game was the fact that Clemson's offense didn't move with urgency in the third and fourth quarters while down multiple scores. In fact, the Tigers didn't start to run their up-tempo offense until there was not enough time left for a comeback. Swinney explained why.

"Could have been a little faster," he said. "There were, a couple of moments that we just weren't, we needed to be a little quicker. There was one time or two we needed to get out of bounds. We didn't get out of bounds. But, you know, just definitely, that was something else too, that that we needed to, you know, be a little better with, with getting the ball snapped a couple of times quicker than what we did."

Finally, Swinney was asked about whether the open week hurt his team's momentum. He was adamant that having an open Saturday prior to this game was no factor in the lass.

"I don't, I don't make no excuses," he said. "There's no excuses, none. No excuses. Ain't got nothing to do with it. Just flat out, got my butt out coach tonight. Ain't got nothing to do with it."