By: Zachary Wagner

Head Football Coach Dabo Swinney met with the media following the Clemson Tigers Football practice on Thursday evening at Allen N. Reeves Football Facility. Swinney spoke to the press via zoom for roughly 30 minutes covering a variety of topics.

Swinney announced during the call that tight end Luke Price will miss the entire 2020 season following an ACL tear suffered during practice. Price appeared in all 15 games for Clemson last year, used primarily as a blocking tight end.
Coach Swinney said that Monday starts game prep and the team tomorrow would be holding a “mock game” for players that have never been apart of a gameday and need to learn what goes on. Swinney also stated that travel plans would remain the same as if the game was normally being played with travel on Friday and a walk through at the stadium. 

Swinney also spoke on the ACC and what he thinks the strengths of the league will be this year. “Top to bottom I think the league is going to be very good this year.”

Swinney: “I think this league is going to be really good this year.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney also stated that every team has a lot of guy that no one has seen yet. Some of those players for Clemson are: Bryan Breese, Myles Murphy, Malcolm Green, Demarkus Bowman and DJ Uiagalelei. 

Coach Swinney also spoke on how this year will be a vastly different season:

Swinney: “We’ve never had this amount of football. We’ve never had this amount of time to be with our guys. We’ve been able to have meeting with them since we started spring practice in February.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney on no fans: “It’ll be a unique thing for all of us. That scoreboard will be on and there will be millions of people watching on TV.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney: “We’re going to try to keep it as normal as we can for our guys.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney on not having a single player opt-out:

Swinney: “I don’t worry about opt-outs. Our guys are excited to play, we haven’t had to deal with any of that.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney on the Tigers and COVID-19 testing:

Swinney: “Guys are doing what they need to do, really proud of our group. There’s a lot of people on campus. I’m proud of the guys and how they’ve handled themselves.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney: “We’ve had back to back weekends off and these guys have done a great job to get to this point.“

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney: “We’ll be testing three days a week.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney also stated that with the increasing knowledge of the virus the team could go to daily testing if permitted.

Swinney talked about his second team offensive line as well, stating that they are getting better every day and: “it’s tough to go against our defense everyday in practice.”

Swinney: “It’s tough to go against our defense everyday.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

Swinney: “We’ll probably travel 13-15 offensive lineman. We’ll have a lot of guys ready to go because we’ll need them.”

— ClemsonSportsNews (@ClemSportNews) September 3, 2020

For full coverage of Coach Swinney’s media availability check out our twitter page @ClemSportsNews for full quotes and stories on the Clemson Tigers Football Team.

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