It's My Blog

Well, last night Clemson lost to GA Tech 39 to 34 in the ACC Championship. The game was actually a lot more lopsided than the final score as Tech’s offense basically had their way with us all night while our offense either sputtered and went nowhere or scored on a quick play. I wouldn’t want to take back every quick point we scored but the fact is you have to keep your offense on the field and Tech’s off the field if you want to win the game. So if we score quickly on one drive, we have to either score quickly on the next drive or at least put together a couple of first downs.

Instead, we were inconsistent with a few big plays mixed in, just like we have been all year. Only this time, our incredible pass defense was mismatched with an incredible running team. I was disheartened to see that our Defense didn’t take the lesson we had learned in the first matchup with GT this year: have the ends play the QB. Instead our ends would crash the inside trying to take the dive, and Nesbit would pop to the outside and be off to the races. He’s deadly on the outside but ineffective if you keep him contained. We didn’t do that. We did come back in the fourth quarter though and we even had a chance to win it on the last drive, but yet again this season our two minute offense looked like a bunch of beheaded chickens and we totally flubbed that opportunity.

The worst part about the loss was the inconsistent play of the offense, and it was made even worse by the comments made by Dabo Swinney. In his post game presser, Swinney said:

“They really didn’t stop us either; again, we ran out of time,” Swinney said. “Certainly when you can’t stop them, it’s hard to win. They made some critical plays, 4th down, 3rd down. Hard to win. Time of possession had to be way out of whack. Again, I wouldn’t say they stopped us. It was a shootout, but unfortunately we just couldn’t get the ball enough. And then we had a couple of turnovers on offense that allowed them to get a couple of extra possessions in there.”

However, this is factually not the case. The truth of the matter is that we only stopped them on one drive, while they stopped us on four, with two of those being interceptions. Additionally, Swinney is insinuating here that his shoddy offense deserves no blame and that the defense was the cause of the loss.

This is very Tommy Bowden-esque, but what should we expect? Swinney was hand-picked by Bowden, after all. Defensive Coordinator Kevin Steele told reporters that his defense was to blame and that we would have won if we could have just stopped their offense. This is the difference in the two men: Steele is a good coach who takes responsibility; Swinney is a rookie who is in over his head and looking for a way to save his ass. It was reported during the game that Swinney told the defense that if we couldn’t stop Tech’s last drive then we didn’t deserve to win the championship. The nerve of Swinney to say something like that to our defense after our offense kept them on the field all night. Well he was half right: we didn’t deserve to win the championship, but it was because we hired a WR coach to lead our team.

This sums up the entire season really. We played a horrible schedule and fell into the ACC Championship game. We lost to any decent team we played and even to a couple of horrible ones. Here we are with another disappointing season and another disappointing bowl. I was optimistic that things had changed with Dabo but I was wrong. I should have known the minute he decided that Napier would be the OC that the mediocrity was going to continue. Dabo and his buddies are having a good time and nothing has changed, we’re still the Bowdenesque Tigers of mediocrity, sitting on the sidelines while teams who hire good coaches are actually going somewhere.

Today Clemson got shocked in Columbia and fell to the Gamecocks 34-17.

I was completely caught off guard by the way we played today. It reminded me of last year’s Nebraska debacle, only worse. The game started out great, just like I expected. CJ Spiller had a kickoff return for a touchdown, SC got the ball and Garcia threw an interception, and our offense went on the attack. We were marching right down the field using the intermediate passing game, exploiting the middle of the field…

And then, the ghost of Rob Spence reared his ugly head. I really just don’t know what happened, it’s like someone hit a switch and Billy Napier reverted back to Fun ‘N Punt mode. We ran a fake reverse pass that of course didn’t come close to working and it completely destroyed any sort of rythm that we had. That was the turning point in the game, early in the first quarter. Yes, we got a first down out of it because of a late hit, but that play signaled to our players that our coaches are fools and signaled to Steve Spurrier that he was up against an offensive coordinator who had no clue what he was doing.

The rest is history. Screens, pitch outs, receiver tunnel screens, reverses, and no production. Our offense laid a giant egg out there against a decent defense but definitely nothing top-25 worthy. It was almost like we were trying to make them look like world beaters, doing everything left and right, but nothing up the damn field.

Meanwhile, Spurrier noticed that the one pass his QB threw over the middle got intercepted, so he started picking on our corners, especially Chancellor. We didn’t adjust to this until the second half, and SC was able to use a mixture of passes to the outside and running to run up the score.

I was starting to think that Napier had learned his lessons this year and was growing as an offensive coordinator but this game proved me completely wrong. Our offensive coaching staff is a huge problem for our team and something needs to be done. I like Dabo as the head coach and I like our defense, but our offense hasn’t changed since the days of the Tommy Bowden Fun ‘N Punt.

Clemson just beat Miami 40-37 in overtime. I don’t know what in the world happened in this game. Our defense looked like they had swine flu. Our offense played pretty well, with the exception of Parker’s panic fumble. Our coaches proved once again that they are rookies learning on the job. The game management of the last two minutes was amateurish. I haven’t seen clock management that bad since Tommy West. When you hire rookies… At least we won. Hopefully our coaches can learn from their mistakes.

CJ Spiller is definitely the MVP of this team. I still can’t wait until Harper and Ellington are running the ball. Hopefully we’ll get a receiver to make up for Spiller’s ability there.

Clemson beat Wake Forest 38-3 this weekend in a game that turned out exactly like it should have given the makeup of the two teams. Unfortunately for Clemson, it took a loss to an extremely poor team (Maryland) to get the coaches fired up enough to make the routine game look routine. The defense played like they have all year, but the offense came out inspired and basically dominated Wake all day. There were two differences this week that made the performance possible:

1) The receivers actually caught the ball. It’s amazing how great the offensive line and the quarterback look when the receivers actually make the catch. Last game “the OL sucks!” but now they’re awesome, only nothing they did changed. Wake’s defense wasn’t able to play us tight and our drives didn’t end on third down and it was all for the simple reason that we actually caught the ball this week.

2) The Tight End was used as an integral part of the passing game. We have thrown to the tight end a few times this year but in this game it was obvious that we were trying to get him the ball. The reason this is so important is that it forces the linebackers to respect the passing game, which makes running the ball that much easier. Also the tight end is a good target because he’s usually bigger than the defensive backs and they usually catch the ball (although not always.)

That’s really it. It wasn’t some magical improvement in the blocking or in the running game or in the quarterback or in the playcalling. It was the simple fact that we caught the damn ball. Amazing how that works.

Some other notes:
- CJ Spiller has got to get the ball upfield faster. He simply dances too much. By the time he was able to make his long 60+ yard TD run we already had Wake’s defense on their heels and the line opened up such a huge hole that even CJ had time to get there.
- CJ Spiller is simply an amazing open field runner. We need to put him in a position where he can get the ball in the open field instead of taking handoffs.
- Kyle Parker is still hesitating in the passing game. He makes the throw just a split second too late but luckily he has the arm strength to still deliver the ball.
- Korn throws late, slow, and low. Glad he’s only in the game when it’s over.
- I really like the attitude of our Defense, especially how our DB’s go for the ball instead of going for the hit.

One last thing: our offensive coaching staff should be fired ASAP. This game proves that we have the talent to dominate the ACC on the offensive side of the ball. The loss to Maryland shows that we do not properly coach that talent to utilize their skills. There is simply no excuse for the difference in performance between the Maryland game and the Wake game, and we need to bring in a real Offensive Coordinator (and whatever support staff he wants) so that this doesn’t happen again. If we don’t, we will be doomed to repeat our recent history.