Clemson's defense ready to prove it's ready

Clemson won the ACC championship last season for the first time in 20 years.

The Tigers followed that by doing something never before done in bowl history: giving up 70 points in an Orange Bowl loss.

Guess which one the Tigers' players hear about every day?

"It hasn't stopped yet," linebacker Jonathan Willard said of that defeat to West Virginia.

Guess if they care.

"These guys are champions," Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. "We didn't play good in the BCS Orange Bowl but we won a championship. We don't apologize for last year at all."

Clemson, with a new defensive coordinator in Brent Venables who has a more aggressive scheme, will take try to create some better memories when they play Auburn in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game on Saturday at the Georgia Dome.

Following their coach's leadership, the players aren't letting what they say was a perfect storm of misfortune near South Beach dampen what they accomplished last year. They say the good memory of winning the ACC more than offset the next game.

"It was something we hadn't done in 20 years," defensive end Malliciah Goodman said. "Now we move on and come back and try to do it again."

But no team gives up that many points on a national stage without making some changes.

Swinney fired former defensive coordinator Kevin Steele after the Orange Bowl. It was the second-most points allowed in Clemson's history (Alabama scored 74 in 1931).

The Tigers weren't a bad defense all year. They finished No. 81 in FBS in scoring (29.29 points per game, out of 120 teams), despite having three defensive players selected in the first four rounds of the NFL draft.

In came Venables, who oversaw or helped to oversee Oklahoma's defense since 1999.

Players say it was a smooth transition from Steele's complicated scheme, which was more read and react and didn't hold up against West Virginia's hurry-up offense, to the pin-your-ears back simpler approach that Venables used to help the Sooners allow an average of 20.6 points per game the past five seasons.

"We are smarter," defensive back Xavier Brewer said. "We are going to be able to know where we are."

Venables is leading a young group, featuring 18 underclassmen on the depth chart. But Swinney said earlier in August that the lack of experience is breeding intense competition at almost every position.

"It's really brought an edge to practice," he said.

The players seem more than ready to show what they've learned from Venables because they want to win more than another conference championship.

"If we win that opener we set ourselves up to be a national championship team," Willard said. "To be a national championship team then you first have to win that first game."

Stopping the Orange Bowl talk would be nice, as well. Swinney said the team doesn't talk about that game.

After the debacle, in which the Mountaineers rolled up 595 yards, Swinney told his players that he loved them and that teams will occasionally have nights like that.

Most importantly, he told them to learn from the experience, just as they did when they learned what it takes to win the conference.