On Tuesday, Dabo Swinney pulled back the curtain on the message he delivered before Clemson’s bounce-back: remember who you are. The metaphor he chose has already stuck inside the locker room.
“I told Cade (Klubnik)… sometimes when you get in a situation, you forget who you are,” Swinney said. “Because everyone’s telling you what you’re not, and sometimes you lose your confidence a little bit, or try to do too much.” The reminder? “I’m like, listen, man… you’re Batman.”
Swinney wasn’t claiming he’d seen Gotham’s caped crusader. “Did I see Batman? No, I didn’t see Batman,” he joked. The point, he explained, was belief and agency. “You can do something about it. You don’t have to stay down in this hole—you can just fly right out of it. Remember who you are.”
The Quarterback’s ‘Play Free’ Moment
Swinney’s message landed most clearly with his quarterback, whose performance headlined the turnaround.
“He was awesome,” Swinney said. “That was obviously a tremendous performance by him, and hopefully that can get him back on track—just play with the type of confidence we need to play with… just good to see [him] play free.”
Asked to clarify the “bad man/Batman” line, Swinney leaned into the mindset: “What does that mean? I just… you can do something about it. You don’t have to… you can do something.”
Identity Over Hype
Swinney’s theme: Clemson’s issues weren’t permanent or identity-level—they were correctable and within the team’s control.
“As we reset… guys, you forgot who you are,” he said. “We were not playing anywhere near our capabilities. A few guys, in particular. We just didn’t complement each other.”
That, he emphasized, is fixable. “There are a lot of teams out there that, they lose games, and they’re just not very good—can’t do anything about it. You know, we can. But we’ve got to be who we are, and we’ve got to… avoid [wasting] our capabilities.”
Complementary Football, Confidence Restored
The win, for Swinney, was less about one heroic performance and more about a collective return to form.
“It’s good to see them… have a game like that,” he said. “We can do something about it. But we’ve got to be who we are.”
That means leaning into complementary football—offense, defense and special teams feeding each other—and insisting on a “play free” approach for the QB and the playmakers around him. The Batman line isn’t a slogan; it’s a demand to act like Clemson again.