All right. First, congratulations to Clemson. I thought both teams came out and played hard. It was a fast and physical game, and obviously they made some big plays in big moments throughout it. Unfortunately, we had too many missed opportunities.
Looking back, throughout it, the first drive defensively, we missed a lot of tackles. We were a little sloppy in some of our fits. We allowed them to extend a long drive for a touchdown to start the game, which we knew we wanted to come in and start fast. I thought our defense settled in as the game got going, but we had a couple of big plays that, unfortunately, we gave up throughout it.
Offensively, we really struggled to get things started, sustained. We weren’t good enough. I think we had five-plus drops, which has been very uncharacteristic of what this team has done. A couple missed opportunities where we had space and either a throw or a run or just some bad missed opportunities. We had some penalties that showed up that cost us. We weren’t good enough on our conversion downs — things that we’ve been really good at throughout the course of the year did not show up tonight.
I know it’s not from a lack of want-to or work. These guys have been putting it in, and unfortunately it did not show up in making enough plays this evening. Ultimately, it comes down to all of us — everybody that’s part of the program. It’s just sickening to come up short in this game with all the preparation that’s gone into it.