"...putting your hand in the dirt and run blocking somebody for 50 plays is not fun...so if you don't bring the fire, then I don't know how you're going to be able to do that." - Matt Bockhorst
Excuse me, what? Run blocking isn't fun? There were a few quotes from Matt Bockhorst's pointed press conference that stuck out to me, but perhaps this one more than any other. I played offensive line, and "fun" is almost certainly the exact word that I would use to describe run blocking. Hell, putting your hand in the dirt and run blocking somebody is what offensive linemen are usually begging to do instead of the zone blocking and pass pro sets that are so common in modern offensive football. I really just couldn't understand this quote, and maybe we can take into account that Bockhorst simply didn't use the right word. He was clearly fired up and speaking with a lot of emotion, and maybe he was trying to express something else other than that he didn't find run blocking "fun."
But then it donned on me. There is a time when run blocking isn't fun. I've experienced it, I'm sure most offensive lineman have at one time or another. And that's when you're getting your ass whipped. When the guy across from you is standing you up, pushing you into the backfield, tackling the back, that's when run blocking isn't fun. And that's why Bockhorst is absolutely right on the second part of this quote. You've got to bring a fire, a physicality, a passion to the line of scrimmage with you. You've got to bring a determination that you're going to beat your guy. And its exactly that fire, the very thing that Bockhorst says you have to bring, that neither Bockhorst nor his offensive line cohorts are bringing with them to the line of scrimmage.
I've been an advocate of Bockhorst over the years. In 2018-2019 I thought he should draw more snaps than he did. I raved about him when he did get in and did show a physicality and did play well. But there's not a lot of evidence that that's the guy that still takes the field every Saturday for Clemson. Now in his defense, moving in to center isn't an easy transition. When asked about the transition to center he didn't even talk about blocking, he talked about quality of snaps and about communicating to the rest of the OL at the line of scrimmage. And when you have a nose lined up right across from you that's charging into you at the snap (and I'm pretty sure lining up in the neutral zone a handful of times) it is hard, its a challenge. And it would be unreasonable to expect Bockhorst to dominate that guy.
But it would not be unreasonable to expect him to hold his own, it would not be unreasonable to expect a multi year starter, a 5th year senior, to be able to handle the difficulty of the transition into center and to be able to handle players lined up across from him that would not have been able to get a scholarship offer from Clemson, in fact a lot of the day he was going up against a guy who couldn't even get a scholarship offer from Georgia Tech as he was a walk on in 2018. I would fully expect this guy to beat Bockhorst on a math test, but not at the line of scrimmage.
But yet the guy who couldn't hold his own against the former walk on, the guy who was getting stood up time after time, sat in a room full of reporters and spent 15 minutes railing against perceptions and saying everyone is held accountable, and bragged about how they'll be ready the next time a team plays odd front with double cloud (which NC State almost certainly will do).
Now lest you believe that this is just me railing on Bockhorst, let me make the larger point. Bockhorst is the vocal leader of the offensive line. I think we can say that, based on what we know, he's someone who is respected in the locker room and is looked to as a team leader. So are we in a spot where the performance that he gave on Saturday is the performance of a respected leader? He said that he graded out a winner, so is this the level of performance that we deem a winner? Are the younger linemen striving to be as good as Bockhorst was on Saturday?
I have no doubt that at least some of Bockhorst's fire comes directly from the head coach. There can be little question that Dabo is circling the wagon and creating a common enemy (the "narrative") and building a Clemson vs the world scenario that has helped the program so many times under Dabo's watch. Dabo needs Clemson to be the underdog, that's just the position that he coaches best from and that's the position his teams play best from. But its hard to circle the wagons if the guy driving one of the biggest, most important wagons doesn't know how to steer.
Now Bockhorst did make a good point. He says "its funny because a lot of people have opinions on things, but they don't really look at the tape. They just have an emotional reaction about what they perceive to be what happened during the play." He is 100% correct about that. So let's look at the tape.
Right from the get go, Bockhorst was getting beat at the line of scrimmage.
Again.
Here he gets beat by a freshman who chose Georgia Tech over Mississippi State
Again. Now I will say that this guy is listed at 6'6 360 so I could understand having difficulty with him. But he's also a 2 star recruit who was listed as an offensive guard who chose Georgia Tech over Akron and ECU.
Here he gets beat so bad he has to tackle the guy.
You can't tell people to go watch the tape if your tape looks like that. Just like you can't get up in your opponents face and then fumble the ball a couple plays later. Bockhorst talks about the standard that has been set by previous teams and how this team owes a debt to that standard. But perhaps this team is standing on the shoulders of that standard rather than earning it themselves.
Now let's talk about staffing. Over the summer, the topic of successors to the current staff came up. Here's some of what I wrote in that thread: "I firmly believe that if Dabo gets it the way he envisions it, the staff will eventually be made up entirely of former Clemson players - and not only former Clemson players but players who played under Dabo, and most of which were recruited by Dabo...My primary concern with it is, when you only hire internally it makes it a challenge to create new ideas. If all Miguel Chavis has ever known is the way Dabo and Clemson do it, then he can’t really bring anything new or fresh to the table."
In 2007 Tommy Bowden hired Andre Powell to replace Burton Burns. Now, overall, Powell was a significant step down from Burns. However, he did bring one thing to the table and that was a new outlook on special teams. The way he taught kickoff coverage and returns was markedly different than the way the staff had taught them in 2006. He used different terminology, taught different techniques, and used different drills to develop those techniques. And it worked. Clemson improved dramatically on special teams - most particularly kick off coverage from 2006 to 2007.
If you aren't able to bring in outside ideas into your program, you simply can't improve. We saw this happen with Bobby Bowden and Frank Beamer. They held on to many of the same assistants for years and years most likely because of comfort level and trust and culture but ultimately the program aged with them. We know about Bud Foster's tenure with Beamer, but Beamer also held onto Bryan Stinespring for quite a while, he was offensive coordinator in Blacksburg from 2002-2012 and was part of the staff from 1990 until Beamer's retirement in 2015.
Now, of course, those 2 coaches had significant success that you can't really thumb your nose at. Bowden is the winningest coach in college football history and I think Dabo draws a lot of favorable comparisons to Bowden. I'm not saying that Dabo needs to burn down the barn and bring in all new people, certainly far from it. But building a staff that has largely sat only under your learning tree yields only the same kind of fruit (I just made that up). We watched Bowden and Beamer fall behind in ideas and philosophy and watched their programs slowly wither away as a result. Certainly there are other ways to get new ideas than just hiring outside people. You can attend clinics, visit with other staffs, collect and study film from around the country. But part of experience is being able to even recognize that there could be a problem, and to know how to go about fixing it once you recognize that.
In 2007 and 2008, it was Dabo Swinney and Billy Napier who worked to push Tommy Bowden into new ways of thinking about recruiting and scholarship numbers and facilities and support staff. In 2021, it feels as if Dabo and the Clemson program has become a little insulated, a little bit of an echo chamber. Fixing that is a delicate balancing act. How do you bring in new ideas while not sacrificing the culture you've built? In 2010 I wrote over and over again that at the end of the season Dabo would need to look in the mirror and truly assess the way he was running the program and make some significant changes. Significant changes aren't needed now, not by a long shot, but perhaps some pivots and adjustments will be necessary at the end of this season. Though 3 games in, it would be foolish to write this team - and the ever perseverant Dabo Swinney - off.
But there are some major problems that the team will have to navigate through. We are watching DJU slowly gather his legs, like a new born calf slowly attempting to stand for the first time. He played better against Georgia Tech than he did against Georgia, and was more willing to step up in the pocket and hit checkdowns. We also finally worked in some heavy QB runs and it was easy to see why that's such an important aspect to our offense. DJ isn't Deshaun Watson or Cam Newton in terms of having the ability to make breathtaking plays with his legs, but I think he's comparable to a Tim Tebow, a big but athletic QB who can be a factor in the run game and should be a force in short yardage. Those Florida teams in 2008 and 2009 were absolutely unstoppable on 3rd or 4th and short situations, and they really only ever ran one play in short yardage.
Despite stepping up the pocket, we still see DJ making head scratching decision, like on this play. So DJ does a great job of climbing up in the pocket, getting away from the pressure after the rusher gets around Parks. But why on earth throw it back across the field when he has Galloway looking right at him? Its an easier and safer throw on 3rd and long. Is it going to get the first down? No, but its clearly the better option and this is a prime example of a young QB trying to do too much.
And again here. So this should look familiar as its an identical stunt to one that Georgia ran against us, except they did it to the other side and beat Putnam with it. DJ does a better job of getting the ball out and makes a pretty good throw but to the wrong target. Watch Ngata come open underneath in the crosser. Again, its an easier throw, its an easier catch, almost a certain completion, but he makes the harder throw and asks the receiver to make the harder catch. It should be caught, yes, but I'm less concerned about the drop and more concerned about the decision to throw it there. Does he even see Ngata?
Beyond DJ, the problems at offensive line were a lot more in your face in this game. It was easy to excuse offensive line play after Georgia because of the quality of the Georgia front. But Georgia Tech does not have elite personnel and it was entirely reasonable to expect our offensive line to play much better.
Let me talk about Georgia Tech using a different front than expected. So per Matt Bockhorst in the interview previously reference, Georgia Tech had used this defense previously, but only sparingly. This means that in all likelihood very little practice time was spent on this front and very few plays designed to be successful against an odd front were carried into the game. On a front that an opponent only uses rarely, you might only run a few plays against it practice and might not actually practice it at all. Practice time is precious and you're going to dedicate the majority of those snaps to the things you expect to see the most in the game. So once we realize that they're only going to use an odd front, it essentially means that huge chunks of the play sheet and huge chunks of what you just spent the entire week working on are now meaningless. Imagine going into a job interview you have spent days preparing for, building talk tracks for the standard questions you expect to be asked, but then none of the questions you prepared for were actually asked. Instead you're asked questions you hadn't even really thought about and now you've got to make up answers on the fly. That's essentially what happened Saturday.
Which means that we should have played much better after the lightening delay. The football gods gifted our team significant time to sit in the locker room and go over the odd fronts, build a new play sheet, and run through it. Its not like we've never seen an odd front before, its not like we don't have schemes that we can use against it. With 3 players on the line who are returning starters, you'd expect they could make that adjustment mentally. And truth be told we did play better in the second half. We did drive the ball more effectively. But I've still got to come back to the lack of that fire that Bockhorst spoke of. To be sure, its not a lack of effort, its not a lack of want to, its a lack of a physical mentality, a lack of the will to dominate, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche.
If we could just get this on a consistent basis, we'd be fine. You don't have to put your guy in the dirt in order for it to be an effective block. There were a handful of plays throughout the game that looked like this, where everyone got on a guy, got some push, and gave our back a chance. The job by Tate and McFadden here is text book outside zone. And if we could just get this level of execution on a consistent basis, with the athletes we have, we'd be incredibly productive in our run game. But we just don't get that often enough.
And we did have one back that went into business for himself. There were a couple of occasions where there was some blocking and a lane available for Dixon and he decided to bounce outside. At one point he managed to turn probably a 3 yard gain into an 8 yard loss. I can tell you that there's not a lot of mourning going on in the Clemson program regarding Dixon's departure. That writing was actually on the wall well before the Georgia game, where Dixon had some behavioral issues that I won't go into detail on here and on top of that got beat out by Shipley and Pace anyway.
Moving on, I would like to see Tchio getting more snaps, primarily because I find it hard to believe that he's a less reliable option than Tate is. Most of Tate's issues are technical and its clear he's mentally swimming at times as well.
Here he takes too big of a step and opens up his gap. Check the difference between Putnam's feet and Tate's feet. Take takes way too big of a first step and opens up his inside gap. Also look at his body angle vs. Putnam's. See how Putnam is stepping laterally and staying square so that he's balanced when he takes on the defender. Tate turns his body which means he can't recover after the big step and literally does a little hop step which means he now has no balance and no base and could be pushed back by an aggressive toddler. He doesn't even seem to be aware that its possible that guy could shoot into his gap. Its probably a play that isn't going anywhere anyway, but if you pick up that stunt we've at least got a chance to move forward some.
Here Tate gets way, way too much depth on his pull. His responsibility is the guy that makes the tackle, if he comes upfield Tate can kick him out, if he squeezes in (which he does) Tate seals him inside. But because he takes too big of a step and gets too much depth he can't get around there in time to seal the guy off. It also doesn't seem like he even sees the guy. This is probably a case of game speed being faster than practice speed and it not sorting out exactly like it does in practice.
I also thought this was a pretty lame play call. Look at how much room they're giving us in the slot. They are just giving us those two yards. But the play could have worked with a better block (or even a block at all) by Tate and eventhough I don't really like that play we've seen it be successful in the past, particularly when we had John Simpson pulling around and making that block.
Here Tate takes a really poor angle towards a linebacker. This is not solely a Tate problem. We don't do a good job of blocking at the second level and I'd say that McFadden is really the only guy we have who can consistently block in space. The key to blocking linebackers is not to go to where they are, but where they're going to be. You have to understand that in a play going to the outside, that linebacker is going to turn and run in that direction. So you've got to climb to that level at an angle that can meet him where he's going to be. If you run right at him he will get around you 100% of the time because he's going to move faster than you can get to that spot. I would again chalk this up to a situation where the game is just moving faster than he's prepared for it to move.
This is also a problem for Putnam, although he's better at taking the proper angle but stops his feet a lot before engaging with a linebacker which allows them to just run around him. But at least that can slow the backer down for just a bit and gives Shipley a chance to make a play. Shipley can make guys miss but its a lot harder when you've got 2 coming at you and not one.
Shipley has pretty clearly emerged as our best back. I think we knew coming in that he was an athlete and could make a lot of plays in space, but I've been impressed with his physicality and ability to push the pile. I do worry that our limited depth at back could create problems as the season rolls on and guys get naturally banged up.
I thought the targeting on Simpson was a bad call, but he invited it a bit by ducking his head. I thought it would have been overturned on review because he did pick his head back up, but you know, it didn't get overturned. You just can't duck your head, and he's young enough that he really shouldn't have gone through a period where he was taught a technique where he would duck his head. And truthfully that for his own safety. You put your head down and run into someone's chest and you might wind up on the front page for the wrong reasons. Its just another example of why the targeting rule needs to change, specifically as it relates to ejection. But I'm pretty sure that horse is dead already.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't talk about our defense for just a bit. This is an impressive, impressive group. Bryan Bresee absolutely played like you'd expect a #1 player in the country to play, and we're seeing flashes of the old XT. XT does sometimes overrun the spot on the QB. The sack he had early was really more about Simpson pushing the QB back into XT's track. But I did see XT pushing through tight ends that were trying to block him, which is something he wasn't doing in 2019. I like him a little better in that standup position.
Also, Myles Murphy is a bad, bad man.
Offensively, I think the most concerning thing is that there isn't just one thing that needs to be fixed. Each unit has really underperformed, save for maybe running back. The wide outs share some blame in our poor perimeter game and other than Davis Allen we've gotten virtually nothing of value from our tight ends either in pass catching or run blocking.
NC State will play a defense similar to Georgia Tech's, but with better players. They'll give us an odd front and I'd imagine they'll sit back in double cloud as well. Georgia Tech's strategy was simple: Make Clemson drive the length of the field, don't give up big plays, and milk the clock. NC State would be smart to employ a similar strategy. With the athletes that we have, it would be wild to think that we couldn't break a big play or two if they open themselves up to that, so they're going to keep a lid on everything and force us to drive. If we show we can run the ball and go on drives and score, then they'll have to change up and open up the chance to throw balls over the top and let DJ show off that big arm and these big receivers show off, well, their bigness. But against Georgia Tech, we couldn't force them to change it up.
Matt Bockhorst dared the ACC to run what Georgia Tech ran on Saturday, and he's probably going to get his wish this weekend. He said Clemson would be ready, but leadership isn't just about words, its about delivering when it counts.
Go Tigers!
Excuse me, what? Run blocking isn't fun? There were a few quotes from Matt Bockhorst's pointed press conference that stuck out to me, but perhaps this one more than any other. I played offensive line, and "fun" is almost certainly the exact word that I would use to describe run blocking. Hell, putting your hand in the dirt and run blocking somebody is what offensive linemen are usually begging to do instead of the zone blocking and pass pro sets that are so common in modern offensive football. I really just couldn't understand this quote, and maybe we can take into account that Bockhorst simply didn't use the right word. He was clearly fired up and speaking with a lot of emotion, and maybe he was trying to express something else other than that he didn't find run blocking "fun."
But then it donned on me. There is a time when run blocking isn't fun. I've experienced it, I'm sure most offensive lineman have at one time or another. And that's when you're getting your ass whipped. When the guy across from you is standing you up, pushing you into the backfield, tackling the back, that's when run blocking isn't fun. And that's why Bockhorst is absolutely right on the second part of this quote. You've got to bring a fire, a physicality, a passion to the line of scrimmage with you. You've got to bring a determination that you're going to beat your guy. And its exactly that fire, the very thing that Bockhorst says you have to bring, that neither Bockhorst nor his offensive line cohorts are bringing with them to the line of scrimmage.
I've been an advocate of Bockhorst over the years. In 2018-2019 I thought he should draw more snaps than he did. I raved about him when he did get in and did show a physicality and did play well. But there's not a lot of evidence that that's the guy that still takes the field every Saturday for Clemson. Now in his defense, moving in to center isn't an easy transition. When asked about the transition to center he didn't even talk about blocking, he talked about quality of snaps and about communicating to the rest of the OL at the line of scrimmage. And when you have a nose lined up right across from you that's charging into you at the snap (and I'm pretty sure lining up in the neutral zone a handful of times) it is hard, its a challenge. And it would be unreasonable to expect Bockhorst to dominate that guy.
But it would not be unreasonable to expect him to hold his own, it would not be unreasonable to expect a multi year starter, a 5th year senior, to be able to handle the difficulty of the transition into center and to be able to handle players lined up across from him that would not have been able to get a scholarship offer from Clemson, in fact a lot of the day he was going up against a guy who couldn't even get a scholarship offer from Georgia Tech as he was a walk on in 2018. I would fully expect this guy to beat Bockhorst on a math test, but not at the line of scrimmage.
But yet the guy who couldn't hold his own against the former walk on, the guy who was getting stood up time after time, sat in a room full of reporters and spent 15 minutes railing against perceptions and saying everyone is held accountable, and bragged about how they'll be ready the next time a team plays odd front with double cloud (which NC State almost certainly will do).
Now lest you believe that this is just me railing on Bockhorst, let me make the larger point. Bockhorst is the vocal leader of the offensive line. I think we can say that, based on what we know, he's someone who is respected in the locker room and is looked to as a team leader. So are we in a spot where the performance that he gave on Saturday is the performance of a respected leader? He said that he graded out a winner, so is this the level of performance that we deem a winner? Are the younger linemen striving to be as good as Bockhorst was on Saturday?
I have no doubt that at least some of Bockhorst's fire comes directly from the head coach. There can be little question that Dabo is circling the wagon and creating a common enemy (the "narrative") and building a Clemson vs the world scenario that has helped the program so many times under Dabo's watch. Dabo needs Clemson to be the underdog, that's just the position that he coaches best from and that's the position his teams play best from. But its hard to circle the wagons if the guy driving one of the biggest, most important wagons doesn't know how to steer.
Now Bockhorst did make a good point. He says "its funny because a lot of people have opinions on things, but they don't really look at the tape. They just have an emotional reaction about what they perceive to be what happened during the play." He is 100% correct about that. So let's look at the tape.
Right from the get go, Bockhorst was getting beat at the line of scrimmage.
Again.
Here he gets beat by a freshman who chose Georgia Tech over Mississippi State
Again. Now I will say that this guy is listed at 6'6 360 so I could understand having difficulty with him. But he's also a 2 star recruit who was listed as an offensive guard who chose Georgia Tech over Akron and ECU.
Here he gets beat so bad he has to tackle the guy.
You can't tell people to go watch the tape if your tape looks like that. Just like you can't get up in your opponents face and then fumble the ball a couple plays later. Bockhorst talks about the standard that has been set by previous teams and how this team owes a debt to that standard. But perhaps this team is standing on the shoulders of that standard rather than earning it themselves.
Now let's talk about staffing. Over the summer, the topic of successors to the current staff came up. Here's some of what I wrote in that thread: "I firmly believe that if Dabo gets it the way he envisions it, the staff will eventually be made up entirely of former Clemson players - and not only former Clemson players but players who played under Dabo, and most of which were recruited by Dabo...My primary concern with it is, when you only hire internally it makes it a challenge to create new ideas. If all Miguel Chavis has ever known is the way Dabo and Clemson do it, then he can’t really bring anything new or fresh to the table."
In 2007 Tommy Bowden hired Andre Powell to replace Burton Burns. Now, overall, Powell was a significant step down from Burns. However, he did bring one thing to the table and that was a new outlook on special teams. The way he taught kickoff coverage and returns was markedly different than the way the staff had taught them in 2006. He used different terminology, taught different techniques, and used different drills to develop those techniques. And it worked. Clemson improved dramatically on special teams - most particularly kick off coverage from 2006 to 2007.
If you aren't able to bring in outside ideas into your program, you simply can't improve. We saw this happen with Bobby Bowden and Frank Beamer. They held on to many of the same assistants for years and years most likely because of comfort level and trust and culture but ultimately the program aged with them. We know about Bud Foster's tenure with Beamer, but Beamer also held onto Bryan Stinespring for quite a while, he was offensive coordinator in Blacksburg from 2002-2012 and was part of the staff from 1990 until Beamer's retirement in 2015.
Now, of course, those 2 coaches had significant success that you can't really thumb your nose at. Bowden is the winningest coach in college football history and I think Dabo draws a lot of favorable comparisons to Bowden. I'm not saying that Dabo needs to burn down the barn and bring in all new people, certainly far from it. But building a staff that has largely sat only under your learning tree yields only the same kind of fruit (I just made that up). We watched Bowden and Beamer fall behind in ideas and philosophy and watched their programs slowly wither away as a result. Certainly there are other ways to get new ideas than just hiring outside people. You can attend clinics, visit with other staffs, collect and study film from around the country. But part of experience is being able to even recognize that there could be a problem, and to know how to go about fixing it once you recognize that.
In 2007 and 2008, it was Dabo Swinney and Billy Napier who worked to push Tommy Bowden into new ways of thinking about recruiting and scholarship numbers and facilities and support staff. In 2021, it feels as if Dabo and the Clemson program has become a little insulated, a little bit of an echo chamber. Fixing that is a delicate balancing act. How do you bring in new ideas while not sacrificing the culture you've built? In 2010 I wrote over and over again that at the end of the season Dabo would need to look in the mirror and truly assess the way he was running the program and make some significant changes. Significant changes aren't needed now, not by a long shot, but perhaps some pivots and adjustments will be necessary at the end of this season. Though 3 games in, it would be foolish to write this team - and the ever perseverant Dabo Swinney - off.
But there are some major problems that the team will have to navigate through. We are watching DJU slowly gather his legs, like a new born calf slowly attempting to stand for the first time. He played better against Georgia Tech than he did against Georgia, and was more willing to step up in the pocket and hit checkdowns. We also finally worked in some heavy QB runs and it was easy to see why that's such an important aspect to our offense. DJ isn't Deshaun Watson or Cam Newton in terms of having the ability to make breathtaking plays with his legs, but I think he's comparable to a Tim Tebow, a big but athletic QB who can be a factor in the run game and should be a force in short yardage. Those Florida teams in 2008 and 2009 were absolutely unstoppable on 3rd or 4th and short situations, and they really only ever ran one play in short yardage.
Despite stepping up the pocket, we still see DJ making head scratching decision, like on this play. So DJ does a great job of climbing up in the pocket, getting away from the pressure after the rusher gets around Parks. But why on earth throw it back across the field when he has Galloway looking right at him? Its an easier and safer throw on 3rd and long. Is it going to get the first down? No, but its clearly the better option and this is a prime example of a young QB trying to do too much.
And again here. So this should look familiar as its an identical stunt to one that Georgia ran against us, except they did it to the other side and beat Putnam with it. DJ does a better job of getting the ball out and makes a pretty good throw but to the wrong target. Watch Ngata come open underneath in the crosser. Again, its an easier throw, its an easier catch, almost a certain completion, but he makes the harder throw and asks the receiver to make the harder catch. It should be caught, yes, but I'm less concerned about the drop and more concerned about the decision to throw it there. Does he even see Ngata?
Beyond DJ, the problems at offensive line were a lot more in your face in this game. It was easy to excuse offensive line play after Georgia because of the quality of the Georgia front. But Georgia Tech does not have elite personnel and it was entirely reasonable to expect our offensive line to play much better.
Let me talk about Georgia Tech using a different front than expected. So per Matt Bockhorst in the interview previously reference, Georgia Tech had used this defense previously, but only sparingly. This means that in all likelihood very little practice time was spent on this front and very few plays designed to be successful against an odd front were carried into the game. On a front that an opponent only uses rarely, you might only run a few plays against it practice and might not actually practice it at all. Practice time is precious and you're going to dedicate the majority of those snaps to the things you expect to see the most in the game. So once we realize that they're only going to use an odd front, it essentially means that huge chunks of the play sheet and huge chunks of what you just spent the entire week working on are now meaningless. Imagine going into a job interview you have spent days preparing for, building talk tracks for the standard questions you expect to be asked, but then none of the questions you prepared for were actually asked. Instead you're asked questions you hadn't even really thought about and now you've got to make up answers on the fly. That's essentially what happened Saturday.
Which means that we should have played much better after the lightening delay. The football gods gifted our team significant time to sit in the locker room and go over the odd fronts, build a new play sheet, and run through it. Its not like we've never seen an odd front before, its not like we don't have schemes that we can use against it. With 3 players on the line who are returning starters, you'd expect they could make that adjustment mentally. And truth be told we did play better in the second half. We did drive the ball more effectively. But I've still got to come back to the lack of that fire that Bockhorst spoke of. To be sure, its not a lack of effort, its not a lack of want to, its a lack of a physical mentality, a lack of the will to dominate, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche.
If we could just get this on a consistent basis, we'd be fine. You don't have to put your guy in the dirt in order for it to be an effective block. There were a handful of plays throughout the game that looked like this, where everyone got on a guy, got some push, and gave our back a chance. The job by Tate and McFadden here is text book outside zone. And if we could just get this level of execution on a consistent basis, with the athletes we have, we'd be incredibly productive in our run game. But we just don't get that often enough.
And we did have one back that went into business for himself. There were a couple of occasions where there was some blocking and a lane available for Dixon and he decided to bounce outside. At one point he managed to turn probably a 3 yard gain into an 8 yard loss. I can tell you that there's not a lot of mourning going on in the Clemson program regarding Dixon's departure. That writing was actually on the wall well before the Georgia game, where Dixon had some behavioral issues that I won't go into detail on here and on top of that got beat out by Shipley and Pace anyway.
Moving on, I would like to see Tchio getting more snaps, primarily because I find it hard to believe that he's a less reliable option than Tate is. Most of Tate's issues are technical and its clear he's mentally swimming at times as well.
Here he takes too big of a step and opens up his gap. Check the difference between Putnam's feet and Tate's feet. Take takes way too big of a first step and opens up his inside gap. Also look at his body angle vs. Putnam's. See how Putnam is stepping laterally and staying square so that he's balanced when he takes on the defender. Tate turns his body which means he can't recover after the big step and literally does a little hop step which means he now has no balance and no base and could be pushed back by an aggressive toddler. He doesn't even seem to be aware that its possible that guy could shoot into his gap. Its probably a play that isn't going anywhere anyway, but if you pick up that stunt we've at least got a chance to move forward some.
Here Tate gets way, way too much depth on his pull. His responsibility is the guy that makes the tackle, if he comes upfield Tate can kick him out, if he squeezes in (which he does) Tate seals him inside. But because he takes too big of a step and gets too much depth he can't get around there in time to seal the guy off. It also doesn't seem like he even sees the guy. This is probably a case of game speed being faster than practice speed and it not sorting out exactly like it does in practice.
I also thought this was a pretty lame play call. Look at how much room they're giving us in the slot. They are just giving us those two yards. But the play could have worked with a better block (or even a block at all) by Tate and eventhough I don't really like that play we've seen it be successful in the past, particularly when we had John Simpson pulling around and making that block.
Here Tate takes a really poor angle towards a linebacker. This is not solely a Tate problem. We don't do a good job of blocking at the second level and I'd say that McFadden is really the only guy we have who can consistently block in space. The key to blocking linebackers is not to go to where they are, but where they're going to be. You have to understand that in a play going to the outside, that linebacker is going to turn and run in that direction. So you've got to climb to that level at an angle that can meet him where he's going to be. If you run right at him he will get around you 100% of the time because he's going to move faster than you can get to that spot. I would again chalk this up to a situation where the game is just moving faster than he's prepared for it to move.
This is also a problem for Putnam, although he's better at taking the proper angle but stops his feet a lot before engaging with a linebacker which allows them to just run around him. But at least that can slow the backer down for just a bit and gives Shipley a chance to make a play. Shipley can make guys miss but its a lot harder when you've got 2 coming at you and not one.
Shipley has pretty clearly emerged as our best back. I think we knew coming in that he was an athlete and could make a lot of plays in space, but I've been impressed with his physicality and ability to push the pile. I do worry that our limited depth at back could create problems as the season rolls on and guys get naturally banged up.
I thought the targeting on Simpson was a bad call, but he invited it a bit by ducking his head. I thought it would have been overturned on review because he did pick his head back up, but you know, it didn't get overturned. You just can't duck your head, and he's young enough that he really shouldn't have gone through a period where he was taught a technique where he would duck his head. And truthfully that for his own safety. You put your head down and run into someone's chest and you might wind up on the front page for the wrong reasons. Its just another example of why the targeting rule needs to change, specifically as it relates to ejection. But I'm pretty sure that horse is dead already.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't talk about our defense for just a bit. This is an impressive, impressive group. Bryan Bresee absolutely played like you'd expect a #1 player in the country to play, and we're seeing flashes of the old XT. XT does sometimes overrun the spot on the QB. The sack he had early was really more about Simpson pushing the QB back into XT's track. But I did see XT pushing through tight ends that were trying to block him, which is something he wasn't doing in 2019. I like him a little better in that standup position.
Also, Myles Murphy is a bad, bad man.
Offensively, I think the most concerning thing is that there isn't just one thing that needs to be fixed. Each unit has really underperformed, save for maybe running back. The wide outs share some blame in our poor perimeter game and other than Davis Allen we've gotten virtually nothing of value from our tight ends either in pass catching or run blocking.
NC State will play a defense similar to Georgia Tech's, but with better players. They'll give us an odd front and I'd imagine they'll sit back in double cloud as well. Georgia Tech's strategy was simple: Make Clemson drive the length of the field, don't give up big plays, and milk the clock. NC State would be smart to employ a similar strategy. With the athletes that we have, it would be wild to think that we couldn't break a big play or two if they open themselves up to that, so they're going to keep a lid on everything and force us to drive. If we show we can run the ball and go on drives and score, then they'll have to change up and open up the chance to throw balls over the top and let DJ show off that big arm and these big receivers show off, well, their bigness. But against Georgia Tech, we couldn't force them to change it up.
Matt Bockhorst dared the ACC to run what Georgia Tech ran on Saturday, and he's probably going to get his wish this weekend. He said Clemson would be ready, but leadership isn't just about words, its about delivering when it counts.
Go Tigers!
