Tigers Did Not Have a Bye Week

Clemson safety Isaiah Simmons took umbrage with the idea that the Tigers took last week off from football during their bye week.In fact, according to Simmons, the Tigers spent last week working harder than ever to try to replicate a game-week of practice after they escaped North Carolina with a one-point win the previous week.

CLEMSON— Clemson safety Isaiah Simmons took umbrage with the idea that the Tigers took last week off from football during their bye week.

In fact, according to Simmons, the Tigers spent last week working harder than ever to try to replicate a game-week of practice after they escaped North Carolina with a one-point win the previous week.

"I wouldn't say we treated it like to bye-week, even though we had (one)," Simmons said. "We didn't practice every day. We still were trying to treat the week as if you were still going to play this weekend. So just doing that and making sure we were just attacking the game plan and making sure that we'll be able to execute just as well, as if, even though we have more time to prepare, we didn't want to take it lighter."

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Simmons continued to say that the Tigers have had to struggle with managing the extreme expectations. In fact, the Tigers will be favored by double-digits in every game this season—including being 27-point favorites this week against the Florida State Seminoles.

But the problem with the expectations is they don't take into account the fact that each of the Tigers opponents have scholarship players.

"I mean I guess that's what everybody expects us to do, is just to blow everyone out," Simmons said. "But it's football. It doesn't really happen with everyone. It's not very often where the team just go in and just kills everybody off for the year. It's not... I mean, they got scholarships just like we do. Put their shoes on, their cleats on just like we do. I just... I mean of course the media's going to do that, just because I guess that's what's expected but I mean, each win is hard to come by.

"The media or whatever they want to say about it is what they say. I don't think the team are really worried about that. We know what we got, and we believe we got all the ingredients that we need."

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The Tigers have had all of the "ingredients" needed to win their first five games of the 2019 season. But even though those wins have pushed the collective winning streak to 20 games, Simmons is still beating the drum that the 2019 team has not accomplished anything yet.

"Each week is like a new challenge for our team because yeah, you've played for Clemson and the record is like 20 and 0 or whatever," Simmons said. "But we've only won five games as a team, so there's not really much that they can really take credit for other than the five games. And we tried to stress that to them each week...last year, that's done. That's in the books. Has nothing to do with this now. We're a completely new team and what we do is, it's us. All the other stuff's in the past."