No days off for Tigers

While the Clemson Tigers’ close game against the UNC Tar Heels may have caused more than a little hand-wringing among fans who made the trek to Chapel Hill, N.C., last week, coaches and players are using the 21-20 victory as a kind of wakeup call and a teachable moment through the bye week and heading into the team’s next opponent, Florida State.

While the Clemson Tigers’ close game against the UNC Tar Heels may have caused more than a little hand-wringing among fans who made the trek to Chapel Hill, N.C., last week, coaches and players are using the 21-20 victory as a kind of wakeup call and a teachable moment through the bye week and heading into the team’s next opponent, Florida State.

Sophomore defensive tackle Jordan Williams, who had three tackles and a sack against the Tar Heels, said that similar to last year’s game against Syracuse, in which the Tigers came back late to win the game, the narrow victory against UNC could become a positive for his team down the home stretch of the season.

“It definitely helped us out, opened our eyes that maybe we've got a lot of things to work on and other teams are going to throw their best shots at us just because everybody's preparing for Clemson, always wants to play Clemson,” Williams said. “So honestly, it honestly could help us out a lot. We've seen a lot of mistakes that we made and a lot that we need to learn from from this film.”

Clemson and the Tar Heels were close on the scoreboard for most of the game until Trevor Lawrence found Tee Higgins on a 38-yard touchdown pass to take the lead. UNC scored a touchdown late in the game to bring the deficit to one point but failed on a two-point conversion try to seal the win for the Tigers.

The Tigers plan to continue working to get ready for the next game during the upcoming bye week and aren’t treating the weekend as a break, Williams said.

“We're never going to treat it like that — never — and the coaching staff's not going to allow us to either,” he said. “We're going to treat it as if we're going to play Saturday (against) Florida State. We're going to be practicing, prepping for them all week. And then, when we get back from the off day, we're going to go right back to it again for that whole week.”

Williams said the team was looking to have a productive bye week in preparation for the game against the Seminoles, which is set for Oct. 12 at Memorial Stadium.

“With the injuries — everybody — we're trying to get everybody back healthy, and we just honestly, just can't take this week off,” he said. “We can't focus on getting out of practice early and going back to our homes and stuff like that. We just got to focus on Florida State, focus on preparing, practicing each week, going hard, not taking any days off.”