THEY SAID IT

“Well, I was disappointed with the effort today. We looked like a very poorly coached team. That starts with me. Right from the very opening series offensively. We can’t even take the play call into the huddle without screwing it up.”— Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson “Clemson is a good football team. I give them credit. They’ve got some really good players. And it just kind of compounded. At least the kids fought. I thought they came back and fought in the second half. It would have been easy to quit and they fought, but we’ve got a ways to go.”—

Johnson “I’ve never experienced anything like this in my coaching career, being as inept as we are on offense.”— Johnson “It seems like whenever we go on the road, we self-destruct right from the very start. The last two road games, really, the last three road games. I mean, this was just like the Duke game. We get behind 19-3 and we self-destruct right out of the box.”— Johnson “Honest to God, I think if you can try too hard ... I think they want to do well and it’s like, it just creates more issues and then when it started like it did, then it just snowballs.”— Johnson “They did a good job blitzing us and kind of keeping us out of our game. We got pretty confused out there. It was obvious. We didn’t do a very good job on offense at all. Credit to them. They did a really good job. We just didn’t do what we had to do.”— center Freddie

Burden “At a point, we want effort, but there’s got to be a point where you’re doing your job with effort and you’re not just running around like a headless chicken trying to make a play thinking,‘I’ve got to just make every play, run with effort-type thing. You’ve got to take care of your job and then take care of everything else.” — defensive tackle Adam Gotsis “I think it’s ridiculous that you’re even asking me that question. That you even say the word. I mean, I’m serious. I’m sick of it. I don’t even know why we even bring up that dadgum word. How about some of these other teams out there that lose to unranked opponents all the time. That’s our 33rd win vs. (an) unranked opponent (in a row). We ain’t lost to anybody unranked since 2011, but I have to come to a press conference in 2015 and get asked that. And that’s all media (expletive). I can tell you how they feel about it. They don’t like it. It’s a lack of respect. It’s not doing your homework and paying attention to what reality is. Should not be asked that question. Period. That’s how we feel about it.”— Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, in response to a question about “Clemsoning”