CLEMSON | Dabo Swinney visited with the media this afternoon via teleconference. His last previous gathering with the media was April 3, so there was a lot of ground to cover.

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Here's the rundown on the more important themes (and we covered his statement on George Floyd and Justyn Ross in separate posts): -- More on Ross' upcoming surgery, which will put him out for the season:

LINKS: Justyn Ross Out For The Year | Dabo Swinney's comments on current events/George Floyd

Quotes/Bullet Points From Dabo Swinney ...

"The frustrating thing for Justyn is he feels perfectly fine. The surgeon has a good plan ahead. No guarantees with anything. Hopefully this surgery will go well and take him out of harm’s way with risk of paralysis or anything like that. Hopefully by January he’s doing great and he’s got a decision to make. Does he take his shot at the NFL Combine or come back for another year? Similar to Mike Williams. Different injury but similar circumstances.

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"Justyn is in a really good place. At the beginning it was a hard thing for us all to get our arms around."

Swinney said he has already addressed Ross' situation with the team.

-- More on why he chose the way he did to issue his thoughts on the state of unrest in the wake of the George Floyd killing:

"I spent the last week listening. It’s not about being the first with a statement. I have a great staff. I’m not on social media and I’m not going to join Twitter just to make a statement on something. When I speak I get criticized and when I don’t speak I get criticized. I was just trying to arrange thoughts to where I thought they could be constructive."

-- On what he's doing to make sure his players feel supported when they get back to campus:

"We try to do the same things we’ve always done, which is to love them. Communication is one thing that’s allowed us to sustain us this long. We’ve always been transparent and we will continue to do that."

-- Dabo was asked about his opinion from 2016 on the Colin Kaepernick protests, when he said people who think this country is falling apart "need to move to another country."

"That was probably a harsh statement for sure," Dabo said today.

"But I still do believe in the good of people. As a person of faith I do believe that. I still believe we have the best country in the world."

-- I asked him if there's anything he's telling his players to do or not to do as they arrive back to campus. He said the majority of team was already back for some time because they live off campus. Clemson is providing temporary off-campus housing for the guys who would ordinarily live on campus.

"Be smart," he said. "Heed the advice that’s our there. Stay clean and practice social distancing. Stay away from big groups and all those types of things."

Swinney said Clemson has a very organized, phased-in process we’re going to go through here and hopefully we get back to a more normal situation later in the summer and in August.

-- On Mario Goodrich:

"He's doing good. He had a little fragment they had to scope out. He’s doing really well. I think he’s the only scholarship guy who’s not back. I think he’ll be back on the 8th. He had one more week finishing up his therapy. He's doing really good. I don’t expect any issues."

-- On the health of staff, players and whether anyone has been sick with COVID:

"Everybody’s good. Everybody’s been in contact with Danny Poole and our medical team and our coaches and all that. We’ve all been good. But we’ll continue to daily monitor that when we get back together. If we find out something later on, those are all private, medical things.

"When we do all the testing they may say this guy has had it and this guy has had it. It’s not like we’re going to have a report card every week. Those are all medical privacy things. We will do the testing starting next week. It will be a daily process of temperature checks. All the precautions you can think of are in place."

-- Swinney said they have a good group of receivers that they’re excited about.

"It’ll put a lot on Grisham’s and my plate to make sure they’re ready. The positive of the COVID situation is there’s been an enormous amount of meeting time that’s been incredibly valuable. The biggest thing with young players is just knowledge. To have the two freshmen listening in those meetings has been really important. I expect Justyn to be one of the best coaches we have this fall in getting these guys ready. He loves those guys.

-- On Nolan Turner:

"He's doing great. He’s pretty much doing everything full speed."

-- On Nyles Pinckney:

"He has really been working hard and progressing."

-- On what he can do in the community to address the issues of inequality, social injustice, etc.:

"The best thing is to use our platform in a positive way and to be an example. The best thing we can do is for people to be able to point to our team and see hopefully what the world wants, to see people who love and respect each other. People who sometimes disagree but aren’t disagreeable. Project love, positivity, respect, service, kindness, humility. That’s the best thing we can do for our community is to be good examples of all of those things."

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