“There are known knowns. These are thinks we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” - Sam Kinison
The hardest thing to determine after playing a team like Louisiana Tech is - what can we truly take away from this game? Surely Louisiana Tech is a more stout opponent than Furman, but they’re also not nearly on the same level as the teams we’ll need to beat in order to win a championship - conference or otherwise. We also know that given the quality of opponent, coaching staffs have a tendency to hold back on what they put in the game plan and what packages they use. Aside from that, we also know that Clemson had several guys out this week, particularly on defense. And I think it’s probably safe to say that had we been playing NC State or Florida State, some of those guys would have been able to play.
So how do we handle the good? And how do we handle the bad? These are the nebulous questions that plague us when we play a middling opponent like We did this week. What do we know, and what don‘t we know? We know a few things: we know DJ is playing better, we know Shipley has been our most explosive player on offense, we know Antonio Williams has emerged as a guy who needs more touches, we know that our defensive front is dominant, we know Barrett Carter has very quickly developed into a great player, and….that’s about it, right? We don’t know much else for certain, though there are some signs.
There are some signs that our offensive line has greatly improved, lots of signs. But I think its natural for Clemson fans to be skeptical until the OL shows up and plays well against a better opponent. There are signs that we might have some issues at corner. But once we are back to full strength on the DL and at safety, some of those issues may be alleviated.
Wake will be a big test for this team. To be sure, Clemson is clearly more physically talented than Wake, but Wake is going to challenge our ability to be sound on defense and to be consistent on offense. Wake is well coached an I think Clawson and company will be the first staff that has enough film on Wes Goodwin’s defense to build a solid plan for it and Wake has the system and players in place to execute it.
Let’s talk about the defense for a bit. The biggest difference that I’ve noticed this season is the amount of cover 3 we are playing. I mentioned we played a lot of cover 3 against Georgia Tech but didn’t think much of it. However on Saturday we played a ton of cover 3, even in situations where - to me - cover 3 didn’t make a lot of sense. Venables favored quarters coverage and used it often. Quarters breaks the field into 4ths, but the 4ths are vertical in nature, meaning that a safety in quarters coverage isn’t necessarily immediately bailing and has the ability to quickly come down to play the run. In cover 3 the corners and a safety are always responsible for the deep 3rds, meaning they are immediately bailing but one safety stays down anyway.
In other words, quarters provides more flexibility and versatility for defenders, especially safeties, to make plays while cover 3 is a bit more rigid in assignments and is more of a “true zone” defense.
Now what I don’t know is if Goodwin genuinely prefers cover 3 over quarters, or if there’s something specific about LA Tech and GA Tech that made him use that coverage more often, or if he was just kind of running a base defense and wanted a safety down to help with the run. And look, there’s nothing wrong with running cover 3, but it is a little bit of a shift philosophically. This is more in line with the Saban/Belichick style of defense which is heavily used at the NFL level.
Like most defenses, cover 3 has some known spots that can be exploited by the offense. As a defense, you can prepare for that and take away some of the known holes, but you can’t take away all of them.
Here’s Tech exploiting one of our weak spots. I’m not really sure that Mickens could have played that much better, sometimes you tip your cap to the QB for making a great throw. He’s throwing to the far sideline and, honestly, that’s not a throw all college QBs can make and its probably not a throw many coaches would recommend, as there’s a big risk of that ball floating or being a bit short and getting picked. But this is a really strong throw to the spot where we were weakest.
This was a spot where I was sort of surprised to see cover 3. Its 3rd and 11 so a clear passing down, they’re in 10 personnel which is passing personnel, it just seems obvious this is going to be a passing situation so quarters or, if you’re sticking with a cover 3 philosophy, cover 1 with man to man would make more sense.
Here they do it again. Same route, same throw but shorter this time. Again he puts the ball in a good spot. I wrote last week that when Georgia Tech was playing cover 3 I kept waiting for us to hit the seam with the tight end, and you can see the seam is open here as well. But they have their tight end running a man beater instead of a cover 3 beater.
This time they’re in trips which, in my mind, should automatically trigger a quarters coverage or at least a cover 6, but we stay in cover 3. They run a spacing concept here and he could almost certainly make a throw to the sideline and hit that guy again, but he drops it inside after Maguire is pulled in by the playaction.
One more time just for good measure.
Now this is cover 1 with man underneath, and you can see Greene gets beat here. This one is challenging for me because I don’t really know what he’s coached to do and what the proper technique is for him here, but I can’t believe that its for him to just stand there flat footed. It does look like he’s playing inside technique to force the WR outside. This really wouldn’t be surprising because, again, you’d think that out route would be a much more difficult throw for the QB but he makes a good throw here as well. Even if he doesn’t hit the out I think he’s going to hit one of those crossers underneath.
The good news on defense is we have some really, really good young players on the interior who are very much capable of stepping in when the starters are out.
@sjohnson_15 called out Payton Page’s performance and he was not wrong. Here Page just dominates his guy And forces a bad throw by the QB.
Last week I lamented that although Bresee was fantastic and working laterally and sliding off of blocks, I was concerned he wouldn’t be able to eat up blocks and free linebackers. Here Page does exactly that. The guard and center want to double team him and then work up to the linebacker, but Page is big and strong enough to just take them both on, hold his position, and allow the linebacker to come up and make the play. I used to say that Kendall Joseph should give credit for half of his tackles to Dexter Lawrence, and here Wade Woodaz should be giving credit to Payton Page.
Ruke has really developed into a consistent playmaker and just knows how to get into backfields. He’s been stellar in these first few games.
Tech tries a run here and Ruke says Ohnonono.
And Mr. Capehart came to the party as well.
We can win with those guys if we need to. But Davis is a game wrecker and Bresee is an elite talent so lets hope they’re both available for the foreseeable future.
Wake is going to challenge this defense and will have a chance to expose any weaknesses they think they’ve found. Wake typically runs that sloooow read option where they try to wait as long as possible to make the decision and we have blown that up in the past. Our DL is just too good for that and we’ll eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if they go heavy on that. My guess is they take to the air early and often and try to pick on the corners and get the ball out relatively quickly to avoid pressure. They’ll know they’re outclassed at the LOS and they’ll plan for that.
Clemson, of course, will also know they’ve got Wake outclassed up front and I‘d imagine Goodwin is going to focus on coverage knowing that the front probably won’t need help in generating pressure or stuffing the run.
But Wake’s real problem is going to be that they can’t stop our running game.
This offensive line is playing well. As I said in the open, we can’t know for sure where they are until they’re pressed more physically by teams with similar talent levels, but there is reason for optimism here.
One thing our OL is doing much better is blocking on the second level. These guys are getting to linebackers and getting on them and that’s creating space that we haven’t done a good job of creating in the past. I think this speaks to our improved recruiting on the OL as we have more athletic guys who are able to make blocks in space against smaller, quicker players.
Here’s an example. You can see Putnam and Miller both making great blocks on linebackers. And I’m telling, it might not seem like it, but these are tough blocks. Linebackers flow quickly and they’re small and can get around linemen. Will Putnam has to be up for most improved player on this team along with DJ. I mean the guy is playing at another level and these are the kinds of things he couldn’t do in the past.
Watch Putnam here get his hips around on the nose guard. Again, this is a tough block. He’s initially out of position but quickly gets his head to the right side and follows his hips around to wall that Guy off. And just look at McFadden go.
Here is Ship’s long touchdown in the 3rd and look who is up on the second level getting a key block on a linebacker.
Speaking of Shipley, the dude is ready to be a star. He runs with great intensity and finishes his runs and obviously has explosive speed. BUT, if he wants to get more snaps, he’s gotta do a little better than this. Its kind of a running joke around here about RBs not being able to pass pro, but you’ve got to be able to hold your ground some just so you’re not putting the QB in jeopardy. Dude gets rocked so hard he almost sacked DJ himself.
Here’s a better job by Mafah. He picks the blitzer up and keeps the pocket clean, and DJ drops an absolute dime in there on the fade.
Speaking of fades, we ran an awful, awful lot of 3x1 formations on Saturday night. This means that we had 3 eligible receivers on one side of the formation and only 1 on the other. We did this with different players, sometimes having the TE on the line, sometimes flexing him out, sometimes we bunched our trips, sometimes we had them spread. But a lot of 3x1. With 3x1 you’re creating space, you’re forcing the defense to essentially cover a guy one on one, and we just threw fades at it all night. This is kind of frustrating because single coverage lends itself to lots of other routes, like slants and comebacks, and outs, and posts, and sluggos, etc etc. But we mostly just threw fades.
I mentioned last week that Rob Spence was great at using formations to create Space. On 4th down against South Carolina in 2007, he actually used a 4x1 formation with an empty backfield that got Aaron Kelly matched up one on one with a freshman corner and Aaron beat him easily inside on a slant for the first down. Here’s that play in case you were curious.
On the strong side of those 3x1s, we chose to use the numbers we had mostly for screens. Again, this is a little frustrating because there’s lots of great route combinations that you can use out of trips and I think trips bunched is especially difficult for a defense to cover. Those who are long time readers of My Thoughts (Long) will remember my discussion of the success we’ve had Against Alabama over the years using bunch trips.
So My point is, we were in 3x1 a lot and there’s a lot of cool things you can do with 3x1 and we just didn’t do any of those cool things. Maybe that’s by design, maybe we’re holding a lot of route combinations in our pocket, and I’ll just say that I hope that’s the case.
We also did more with motion, using the jet motion a lot as misdirection. I still think we can be more creative than we have been, but hopefully that’s coming.
Back to the OL, the pocket was incredibly clean most of the night, there were really only a few times that DJ was rushed.
Here Tech fools us with an overload blitz. Last week I pointed out a play where Georgia Tech brought an overload blitz, but we protected the opposite side. Well, same thing happens here. You can see the way it winds up is they have 3 on 2 and there’s just no way to pick up all of their blitzers. This is a very Venables-esque type blitz because it feels like they brought the house but they really only brought 5. But they confused us and we thought they’d be coming from the other side. I don’t know who is responsible for getting the protection set correctly. It could be Putnam, it could be DJ, it could be the sideline. Its probably some weird mix of all 3.
This was the only instance I could find of one of our OL being physically just beaten in pass pro on Saturday night. The pass rusher makes a nice adjustment here and catches Parks off balance and drives him into the QB. And honestly this was DJ’s only bad decision of the night that I can recall. Was fortunate it was picked off. Also, check Mafah at the top with another nice blitz pickup.
Another ugly play that was an adjustment by LA Tech. They changed their assignments after we were burning them on the read option. They just assigned their end to the dive and their OLB to the QB rather than trying to have their DE slow play it because he was getting beat. You can see Briningstool wasn’t ready for that adjustment and just misses the guy.
On the backups: I’m impressed by Sadler and Sage Ennis. I think Tucker has improved a lot and I think Tristan Leigh is on his way, but still some work to do. But, way ahead of where Jackson Carman was as a freshman.
Here’s a clip where Tucker gets a nice drive block, Sadler gets a nice seal block, Ennis gets the kickout. And just to prove my point about linebackers being tricky to block, there’s Mays just whiffing on one.
More good work by Sadler and Ennis here.
Pass Pro is solid here. Klub has to get rid of that ball. He’s got Ennis over the middle and he’s got the arm talent to hit him but doesn’t pull the trigger. You can see Leigh’s footwork at the bottom, I think its pretty solid but a little slow, you can tell he’s still mastering the technique and having to kind of think about it to be sure he does it correctly. I think his feet are a little too wide. But those are easily correctible things that will get better over time. He doesn’t have any blatant bad habits here like karate chopping. He uses his hands pretty well here, actually.
And one last shoutout to my boy Putnam stoning this blitzing linebacker.
But the question remains, are we going to get the same type of movement against down linemen from NC State? Will we be able to pick up linebackers from Florida State? Notre Dame? Miami? Those defenses are going to move much faster and they’ll be much more physically talented. It won’t be as easy to get those LBs and it won’t be as easy to get your head around on those linemen. And of course the hope is that iron sharpens iron and that practicing and scrimmaging against the talent on our own defense will prepare these guys for those teams, but nothing can truly simulate the speed of the game.
Wake is, to this point, the best team we’ve played in 2022 but we should still carry a large enough talent gap to win comfortably.
Go Tigers!
The hardest thing to determine after playing a team like Louisiana Tech is - what can we truly take away from this game? Surely Louisiana Tech is a more stout opponent than Furman, but they’re also not nearly on the same level as the teams we’ll need to beat in order to win a championship - conference or otherwise. We also know that given the quality of opponent, coaching staffs have a tendency to hold back on what they put in the game plan and what packages they use. Aside from that, we also know that Clemson had several guys out this week, particularly on defense. And I think it’s probably safe to say that had we been playing NC State or Florida State, some of those guys would have been able to play.
So how do we handle the good? And how do we handle the bad? These are the nebulous questions that plague us when we play a middling opponent like We did this week. What do we know, and what don‘t we know? We know a few things: we know DJ is playing better, we know Shipley has been our most explosive player on offense, we know Antonio Williams has emerged as a guy who needs more touches, we know that our defensive front is dominant, we know Barrett Carter has very quickly developed into a great player, and….that’s about it, right? We don’t know much else for certain, though there are some signs.
There are some signs that our offensive line has greatly improved, lots of signs. But I think its natural for Clemson fans to be skeptical until the OL shows up and plays well against a better opponent. There are signs that we might have some issues at corner. But once we are back to full strength on the DL and at safety, some of those issues may be alleviated.
Wake will be a big test for this team. To be sure, Clemson is clearly more physically talented than Wake, but Wake is going to challenge our ability to be sound on defense and to be consistent on offense. Wake is well coached an I think Clawson and company will be the first staff that has enough film on Wes Goodwin’s defense to build a solid plan for it and Wake has the system and players in place to execute it.
Let’s talk about the defense for a bit. The biggest difference that I’ve noticed this season is the amount of cover 3 we are playing. I mentioned we played a lot of cover 3 against Georgia Tech but didn’t think much of it. However on Saturday we played a ton of cover 3, even in situations where - to me - cover 3 didn’t make a lot of sense. Venables favored quarters coverage and used it often. Quarters breaks the field into 4ths, but the 4ths are vertical in nature, meaning that a safety in quarters coverage isn’t necessarily immediately bailing and has the ability to quickly come down to play the run. In cover 3 the corners and a safety are always responsible for the deep 3rds, meaning they are immediately bailing but one safety stays down anyway.
In other words, quarters provides more flexibility and versatility for defenders, especially safeties, to make plays while cover 3 is a bit more rigid in assignments and is more of a “true zone” defense.
Now what I don’t know is if Goodwin genuinely prefers cover 3 over quarters, or if there’s something specific about LA Tech and GA Tech that made him use that coverage more often, or if he was just kind of running a base defense and wanted a safety down to help with the run. And look, there’s nothing wrong with running cover 3, but it is a little bit of a shift philosophically. This is more in line with the Saban/Belichick style of defense which is heavily used at the NFL level.
Like most defenses, cover 3 has some known spots that can be exploited by the offense. As a defense, you can prepare for that and take away some of the known holes, but you can’t take away all of them.
Here’s Tech exploiting one of our weak spots. I’m not really sure that Mickens could have played that much better, sometimes you tip your cap to the QB for making a great throw. He’s throwing to the far sideline and, honestly, that’s not a throw all college QBs can make and its probably not a throw many coaches would recommend, as there’s a big risk of that ball floating or being a bit short and getting picked. But this is a really strong throw to the spot where we were weakest.
This was a spot where I was sort of surprised to see cover 3. Its 3rd and 11 so a clear passing down, they’re in 10 personnel which is passing personnel, it just seems obvious this is going to be a passing situation so quarters or, if you’re sticking with a cover 3 philosophy, cover 1 with man to man would make more sense.
Here they do it again. Same route, same throw but shorter this time. Again he puts the ball in a good spot. I wrote last week that when Georgia Tech was playing cover 3 I kept waiting for us to hit the seam with the tight end, and you can see the seam is open here as well. But they have their tight end running a man beater instead of a cover 3 beater.
This time they’re in trips which, in my mind, should automatically trigger a quarters coverage or at least a cover 6, but we stay in cover 3. They run a spacing concept here and he could almost certainly make a throw to the sideline and hit that guy again, but he drops it inside after Maguire is pulled in by the playaction.
One more time just for good measure.
Now this is cover 1 with man underneath, and you can see Greene gets beat here. This one is challenging for me because I don’t really know what he’s coached to do and what the proper technique is for him here, but I can’t believe that its for him to just stand there flat footed. It does look like he’s playing inside technique to force the WR outside. This really wouldn’t be surprising because, again, you’d think that out route would be a much more difficult throw for the QB but he makes a good throw here as well. Even if he doesn’t hit the out I think he’s going to hit one of those crossers underneath.
The good news on defense is we have some really, really good young players on the interior who are very much capable of stepping in when the starters are out.
@sjohnson_15 called out Payton Page’s performance and he was not wrong. Here Page just dominates his guy And forces a bad throw by the QB.
Last week I lamented that although Bresee was fantastic and working laterally and sliding off of blocks, I was concerned he wouldn’t be able to eat up blocks and free linebackers. Here Page does exactly that. The guard and center want to double team him and then work up to the linebacker, but Page is big and strong enough to just take them both on, hold his position, and allow the linebacker to come up and make the play. I used to say that Kendall Joseph should give credit for half of his tackles to Dexter Lawrence, and here Wade Woodaz should be giving credit to Payton Page.
Ruke has really developed into a consistent playmaker and just knows how to get into backfields. He’s been stellar in these first few games.
Tech tries a run here and Ruke says Ohnonono.
And Mr. Capehart came to the party as well.
We can win with those guys if we need to. But Davis is a game wrecker and Bresee is an elite talent so lets hope they’re both available for the foreseeable future.
Wake is going to challenge this defense and will have a chance to expose any weaknesses they think they’ve found. Wake typically runs that sloooow read option where they try to wait as long as possible to make the decision and we have blown that up in the past. Our DL is just too good for that and we’ll eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if they go heavy on that. My guess is they take to the air early and often and try to pick on the corners and get the ball out relatively quickly to avoid pressure. They’ll know they’re outclassed at the LOS and they’ll plan for that.
Clemson, of course, will also know they’ve got Wake outclassed up front and I‘d imagine Goodwin is going to focus on coverage knowing that the front probably won’t need help in generating pressure or stuffing the run.
But Wake’s real problem is going to be that they can’t stop our running game.
This offensive line is playing well. As I said in the open, we can’t know for sure where they are until they’re pressed more physically by teams with similar talent levels, but there is reason for optimism here.
One thing our OL is doing much better is blocking on the second level. These guys are getting to linebackers and getting on them and that’s creating space that we haven’t done a good job of creating in the past. I think this speaks to our improved recruiting on the OL as we have more athletic guys who are able to make blocks in space against smaller, quicker players.
Here’s an example. You can see Putnam and Miller both making great blocks on linebackers. And I’m telling, it might not seem like it, but these are tough blocks. Linebackers flow quickly and they’re small and can get around linemen. Will Putnam has to be up for most improved player on this team along with DJ. I mean the guy is playing at another level and these are the kinds of things he couldn’t do in the past.
Watch Putnam here get his hips around on the nose guard. Again, this is a tough block. He’s initially out of position but quickly gets his head to the right side and follows his hips around to wall that Guy off. And just look at McFadden go.
Here is Ship’s long touchdown in the 3rd and look who is up on the second level getting a key block on a linebacker.
Speaking of Shipley, the dude is ready to be a star. He runs with great intensity and finishes his runs and obviously has explosive speed. BUT, if he wants to get more snaps, he’s gotta do a little better than this. Its kind of a running joke around here about RBs not being able to pass pro, but you’ve got to be able to hold your ground some just so you’re not putting the QB in jeopardy. Dude gets rocked so hard he almost sacked DJ himself.
Here’s a better job by Mafah. He picks the blitzer up and keeps the pocket clean, and DJ drops an absolute dime in there on the fade.
Speaking of fades, we ran an awful, awful lot of 3x1 formations on Saturday night. This means that we had 3 eligible receivers on one side of the formation and only 1 on the other. We did this with different players, sometimes having the TE on the line, sometimes flexing him out, sometimes we bunched our trips, sometimes we had them spread. But a lot of 3x1. With 3x1 you’re creating space, you’re forcing the defense to essentially cover a guy one on one, and we just threw fades at it all night. This is kind of frustrating because single coverage lends itself to lots of other routes, like slants and comebacks, and outs, and posts, and sluggos, etc etc. But we mostly just threw fades.
I mentioned last week that Rob Spence was great at using formations to create Space. On 4th down against South Carolina in 2007, he actually used a 4x1 formation with an empty backfield that got Aaron Kelly matched up one on one with a freshman corner and Aaron beat him easily inside on a slant for the first down. Here’s that play in case you were curious.
On the strong side of those 3x1s, we chose to use the numbers we had mostly for screens. Again, this is a little frustrating because there’s lots of great route combinations that you can use out of trips and I think trips bunched is especially difficult for a defense to cover. Those who are long time readers of My Thoughts (Long) will remember my discussion of the success we’ve had Against Alabama over the years using bunch trips.
So My point is, we were in 3x1 a lot and there’s a lot of cool things you can do with 3x1 and we just didn’t do any of those cool things. Maybe that’s by design, maybe we’re holding a lot of route combinations in our pocket, and I’ll just say that I hope that’s the case.
We also did more with motion, using the jet motion a lot as misdirection. I still think we can be more creative than we have been, but hopefully that’s coming.
Back to the OL, the pocket was incredibly clean most of the night, there were really only a few times that DJ was rushed.
Here Tech fools us with an overload blitz. Last week I pointed out a play where Georgia Tech brought an overload blitz, but we protected the opposite side. Well, same thing happens here. You can see the way it winds up is they have 3 on 2 and there’s just no way to pick up all of their blitzers. This is a very Venables-esque type blitz because it feels like they brought the house but they really only brought 5. But they confused us and we thought they’d be coming from the other side. I don’t know who is responsible for getting the protection set correctly. It could be Putnam, it could be DJ, it could be the sideline. Its probably some weird mix of all 3.
This was the only instance I could find of one of our OL being physically just beaten in pass pro on Saturday night. The pass rusher makes a nice adjustment here and catches Parks off balance and drives him into the QB. And honestly this was DJ’s only bad decision of the night that I can recall. Was fortunate it was picked off. Also, check Mafah at the top with another nice blitz pickup.
Another ugly play that was an adjustment by LA Tech. They changed their assignments after we were burning them on the read option. They just assigned their end to the dive and their OLB to the QB rather than trying to have their DE slow play it because he was getting beat. You can see Briningstool wasn’t ready for that adjustment and just misses the guy.
On the backups: I’m impressed by Sadler and Sage Ennis. I think Tucker has improved a lot and I think Tristan Leigh is on his way, but still some work to do. But, way ahead of where Jackson Carman was as a freshman.
Here’s a clip where Tucker gets a nice drive block, Sadler gets a nice seal block, Ennis gets the kickout. And just to prove my point about linebackers being tricky to block, there’s Mays just whiffing on one.
More good work by Sadler and Ennis here.
Pass Pro is solid here. Klub has to get rid of that ball. He’s got Ennis over the middle and he’s got the arm talent to hit him but doesn’t pull the trigger. You can see Leigh’s footwork at the bottom, I think its pretty solid but a little slow, you can tell he’s still mastering the technique and having to kind of think about it to be sure he does it correctly. I think his feet are a little too wide. But those are easily correctible things that will get better over time. He doesn’t have any blatant bad habits here like karate chopping. He uses his hands pretty well here, actually.
And one last shoutout to my boy Putnam stoning this blitzing linebacker.
But the question remains, are we going to get the same type of movement against down linemen from NC State? Will we be able to pick up linebackers from Florida State? Notre Dame? Miami? Those defenses are going to move much faster and they’ll be much more physically talented. It won’t be as easy to get those LBs and it won’t be as easy to get your head around on those linemen. And of course the hope is that iron sharpens iron and that practicing and scrimmaging against the talent on our own defense will prepare these guys for those teams, but nothing can truly simulate the speed of the game.
Wake is, to this point, the best team we’ve played in 2022 but we should still carry a large enough talent gap to win comfortably.
Go Tigers!
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