Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has always said the Tigers prepare for every opponent the exact same way. It doesn’t matter whether they are prepping for a national title game, a conference championship, or a game against an Football Championship Subdivision foe, the Tigers will take the same mentality to their practices.

After defeating an in-state foe, and FCS opponent, The Citadel, the Tigers head into their 1st of 2 bye weeks this season with Virginia coming to Tiger Town Oct. 3 in a rematch of the 2019 ACC title game. Even with a bye this week and the revenge-minded Cavaliers looming, the message does not change.

Swinney has always said the Tigers prepare for every opponent the exact same way. It doesn’t matter whether they are prepping for a national title game, a conference championship, or a game against an FCS foe, the Tigers will take the same mentality to their practices.

“Yeah, well, we won’t prepare any different than we prepared for The Citadel,” Swinney said. “To be honest with you, we just do what we do. We’ll show up Monday ready, we met on Monday, we have a daily focus each day. The only difference is we do have a little extra time to get ready for Virginia, so we’ll get a chance to see them play.

“We haven’t seen them play yet. I think they play Duke next weekend, so we’ll get a chance to see them play a game. But we do what we do. Really no different. We’ll practice on Monday. Tuesday’s always been a community-service-type day, but we’re not going to be able to do that right now. So we’re going to do a bit more team-oriented-type function. We’ll practice Wednesday, we’ll practice Thursday. Then we’ll get Friday and Saturday off. We’ll get back in here Sunday for testing and then it’s game week again.”

Swinney said his team will not use the bye week to look ahead to their game against one of the hottest teams in the ACC—the Miami Hurricanes, who appear to be the Tigers’ biggest challenger to Clemson.

“So again, the biggest difference is just a bit of time to prepare for Virginia,” Swinney continued. “We won’t worry — we won’t even think about Miami. We’re one (opponent) at a time here — one day at a time, literally. So but we’ll take this extra time and, again, really spend some time developing our depth — correcting, teaching from this tape — and it’s a great opportunity to kind of go over some things, slow some things back down, but again, get a head start on Virginia, get a chance to watch them next week. But as far as how we prepare, it’s really not any different.”