Good, Bad and the Ugly
Believe it or not, there was some good that came out of last night’s game. Will Shipley looks to have distanced himself in the running back competition. He ran hard, ended up with 88 yards rushing and scored the two Clemson touchdowns. OC Tony Elliott finally turned QB DJ Uiagalelei loose in the 2nd half and his legs were able to get this offense moving a little better. The Tigers didn’t convert on a 4th and 2 deep in GT territory but DJ could convert a 4th and 16 with a quarterback draw? It was truly a weird night.
The defense. What can you say about a defense that has yet to yield a TD in the first 3 games. Led by Lavonta Bentley’s 13 tackles, the defense played their hearts out and withstood two late GT rallies to seal the victory. Expect the Tigers to be tested a little more next week against the NCST Wolfpack and Devon Leary.
Once again, there seems to be more bad than good to talk about, ON THE SURFACE. The Tiger offense looked like they were just going through the motions in the 1st half. There didn’t seem to be any urgency. According to Coach Dabo Swinney and OC Tony Elliott, GT did some things on defense they didn’t expect. The GT defense played 3 down linemen most of the game and put 8 in coverage. The staff did make adjustments in the 2nd half and FINALLY started utilizing DJ in the RPO or outright, calling running plays for the quarterback. This opens up the passing game a bit more and having that big 6-4 250 coming at you past the line of scrimmage makes a difference. DJ ended up with 46 yards in 8 runs, including a couple of timely 3rd down runs for 1st downs. The offense has scored a total of 17 points against two Power 5 defenses. The fan base is spoiled. They are not used to having an offense that actually has to work for points as hard as this team has to work.
Everytime I hear or read someone say “Dabo needs to give someone else a chance,” I cringe. Responding to what the GT defense was doing, Elliott would not have changed his game plan and would have called the same type of game whether it was DJ or Taisun Phommachanh. Like it was mentioned earlier, the Tiger offense has not played with a lot of “urgency” against the two Georgia teams. Is Elliott not comfortable with the downfield passing game yet? The talent is there at WR. The fans say “You’ve got to throw it downfield!!!!!” This is true but with GT putting 8 in coverage and two deep safeties, the success rate probably would not have been very high. What’s the answer? Develop the ground game, run RPO’s, this opens up the downfield game.
Ugly can be defined in two separate events from last night’s game. One, 1st down on the one yard line, 15 seconds to go in the game, and the play call is to hand off to the running back, who actually ran into the line and fumbled it back into the endzone for a safety, giving the ball BACK to GT with another chance to score. Hindsight, QB sneak the ball as GT had no timeouts left or an RPO and keep the ball in DJ’s hands around the end. Lesson learned?
Secondly, a team of Clemson’s caliber should never not recover an onside kick. That was ugly, very ugly. Murphy’s Law? Maybe but this is something staff has probably spent zero time on in practice. The last point to make on the ugly side is my own penchant to think that this year’s Clemson offense is similar to last year’s. My prediction for the GT game was ugly. I fully expected DJ to come out flinging the ball and at some point, he will. He still doesn’t look comfortable in the pocket. It is time for DJ to take command of this offense and be confident in his game. He IS the starting quarterback at Clemson and with Will Shipley taking that next step forward in securing the running back position, DJ can take that next step forward and take control of the offense. NC State is not going to be an easy game. DJ said it himself in his postgame “we are going to bust out soon.”
