In the battle of the Tigers, LSU delivered a brutal statement during Week 1, crushing Clemson 51-10 and leaving Dabo Swinney’s side embarrassed. Swinney believes the humiliation was not just about the score, pointing fingers at Lane Kiffin and LSU over a crucial delay of about two hours.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
According to Clemson beat reporter Jackson Castellano, Swinney described the lightning delay as pretty “frustrating” for the team. The head coach further explained that Clemson would’ve preferred to stay at the hotel, watch some extra film, and go through another walkthrough before the game, but LSU had initially said there would be no delay, which later turned out to be misinformation.
Once the team arrived at Tiger Stadium, they were informed that the game would indeed be delayed. A heavy thunderstorm hit Baton Rouge just before the scheduled 6:49 pm kickoff, triggering NCAA weather safety protocols. Swinney believed the extra time could help his team better prepare its strategy, but Lane Kiffin was not about to let that happen.
After the storm subsided, officials approached Lane Kiffin with an option to shorten the standard 90-minute post-storm warm-up routine and get the game started earlier than 8:40 pm local time. However, the newly appointed head coach wasn’t willing to compromise. Why? As highlighted in Castellano’s X post, Kiffin wanted every possible advantage at his disposal.
“That locker room s***s over there,” he said afterwards. “And when you sit in there, the longer you sit in there – No, it’s a real thing.”
Eventually, both teams did reach the Tiger Stadium around the same time, but the visitors got the visiting locker room experience.
“If you haven’t figured out my competitiveness to win, if I’m gonna go through all that other stuff for two players, nationally, I’m certainly gonna,” he added. “If I think 90 minutes is gonna help us win the game, we’re gonna sit in the locker room for 90 minutes.”
So, was the miscommunication the reason behind Clemson’s crushing defeat? Perhaps not entirely. In a historic loss, LSU embarrassed Clemson by a Texas-sized margin. Speaking of comparisons, LSU piled up a massive 644 total yards of offense, while Clemson’s offense was completely gridlocked, managing an abysmal 145 yards.
Clemson went just 1-of-13 on third-down conversions, failing to keep its defense off the field, while LSU converted 11 of 16. And that was only part of the domination. As if the crushing defeat wasn’t enough, Lane Kiffin took a shot at the Clemson Tigers.
“I thought it would be 35-7 or something like that,” Kiffin said. “I didn’t know they’d be that dysfunctional on offense.”
The 51-10 loss marks the worst defeat of Dabo Swinney’s coaching career and Clemson’s worst loss since 2002, when the Tigers were blown out 48-3 by Florida State.
“We got our a** kicked,” Swinney said. “It’s an embarrassing performance, coaching and playing. We have to own that. But we can’t let that lead to another loss because you have another team rolling in next week.”
While Swinney has acknowledged that the team had serious flaws in its season opener, they are certainly looking to change some aspects of their game as they prepare to face the Georgia Southern Eagles on September 12.