“You can’t just go on beating a team forever.” - Bobby Bowden (paraphrased)
That was what Bobby Bowden said after losing to Clemson for the first time since joining the ACC in 2003. A game which would have huge consequences on the future of Clemson football, as a loss would have all but assured a staff change and, most likely, would have meant that Dabo Swinney would have become a highly successful commercial real estate developer instead of a 2 time national championship head coach.
The 2003 win was also seminal (Seminole?) in that it confirmed that the gap between Florida State and Clemson (and the rest of the ACC) was, in fact, shrinking. Clemson had athletes on the field that could compete against FSU, and not only did they compete that night but they absolutely dominated a FSU team with its eyes towards yet another appearance in the national championship game. Clemson, as we know, would go on to beat Florida State again in 2005, 2006, and 2007 - a win streak which would have been entirely unfathomable only a few years earlier when FSU had the college football world in a virtual strangle hold as a dynasty so dominant that its still rather shocking they only got a couple of national championships out of that run. That loss to Clemson in 2003 was, I think, a watershed moment that indicated the dynasty was coming to an end.
Fast forward to a couple of Saturdays ago and Florida State came into Clemson with an 8 game losing streak and facing a Clemson team that was hungry, starving, to show that it was still a national player. I wrote that this could be another watershed moment in ACC football as Florida State wrests back control of the conference away from a Clemson dynasty that was on the way down. And while FSU did come out victorious, it didn’t quite feel like the decisive victory that FSU was likely looking for. It didn’t really even feel like FSU had proven they were the better team.
I know we don’t like to talk about “moral victories” but Clemson planted its flag and said that we aren’t just going to go away silently. Klubnik and the offense showed dramatic improvement, and the Clemson D-line flexed its muscle and showed that its still an elite group that should be respected and feared. The dynasty may indeed be on a downward swing, but it isn’t quite over yet. Clemson won’t deliver high level accomplishments like a playoff appearance in 2023, but I think that FSU loss still gave Clemson fans hope for a strong run to close out the season And the possibility of a rematch with Florida State in Charlotte on December 22nd. A 10-2 Clemson finish with wins over Miami, UNC, Notre Dame, and South Carolina would be difficult to frown on too much.
As a disclaimer before I dive into an FSU game breakdown - I was only able to see snippets of the Syracuse game, so its very possible I‘ll address something in this post that the Syracuse game might have otherwise changed my perspective on.
I’ll be right honest with you in that I really don’t have many clips to show, the time I have available for clipping plays has been, well, clipped by work demands and generally getting older and more tired. So you’ll have to trust me on some of this.
Anyway. Offensively there were two big stand out negatives for me, and @Larry_Williams hit on them in his thursday review last week. Our playcalling on third downs was head scratching in some key moments, and we really didn’t do a good job of making FSU pay for the amount of cover zero they played.
There were multiple QB run calls on 3rd downs inside the red zone. The first one was more of a straight up draw and went nowhere. The 2nd was an actual QB power complete with pulling linemen and both of these plays were beaten by cover 0 blitzes.
I think most of you know what cover 0 means, but just in case - cover 0 means that the defense has no safety help over the top so they are playing true man to man across the board, and are typically rushing 7 at the QB. This is sometimes referred to as a “joker” blitz because “its a gamble.“ Get it? Like a deck of cards has a joker in it? A true joker blitz is actually an 8 man pressure, but I digress.
Cover 0 is going to require quick, short passes by the QB, as it is really not possible to block all the pass rushers, but there is definitely some opportunity in the secondary if you can beat a guy off the line. Fades and other quick hitting 50/50 balls are also a way to get a defense to come out of cover 0 and play more conservatively which. Even against really good passing teams, you’ll see defenses play cover 0 as a situational blitz, an attempt to change up the QB’s tempo and try and make a play. But most defenses won’t regularly stay in cover 0 unless they really don’t have a lot of respect for the passing game - particularly the WR’s ability to win man to man matchups quickly.
FSU didn’t play cover 0 the whole game, obviously, but in the first half Clemson did a really great job of showing that it could move the ball against a softer defense, both on the ground and through the air. Klubnik played much more efficiently than he did against Duke, and we were able to move the ball on the ground when FSU didn’t bring a man down. At some point FSU decided to really go heavy with a cover 0 package and send 7 guys to the LOS to attack the run game, pressure the QB, and force our WRs to win physical matchups outside.
This was especially true in the red zone, where cover 0 becomes less risky due to the shrunken field and the lack of opportunity to beat a defender over the top. I think that this is why Clemson called 2 QB runs and a disastrous WR screen on 3rd downs in the red zone. We hoped that we could take advantage of their blitzes and pop a big play. In truth, the QB run in the 4th quarter had some promise to it. It was well blocked and there was space for Klub to go, but the space was just too compacted with the number of bodies that were attacking the LOS and Klub couldn’t quite get to the outside quickly enough. It was actually the DE that Klub was reading that made the tackle. If Klub has just a little more space to get out of that guy’s reach, there’s a chance that play does pop for a first down. The other 2 never really had a chance.
I also think these calls are indicative of the staff’s uncertainty about Klubnik, who prior to the FSU game had looked jittery and had a tendency to just throw the ball up for grabs. Klub, however, looked much improved in this game. He was much more settled and confident in the pocket, showing some strong throws, including one early to the opposite sideline that was really impressive and showed why Klubnik’s arm had him rated 5 stars out of high school.
Klubnik did still struggle with short ball accuracy, however, and there was at least one throw to Shipley that was almost certainly at touchdown if he had led Shipley better, and an easy play was turned into a difficult one by a throw that was behind Shipley. This was on one of the circle routes that we ran with Ship a few times in the game, and I liked that Play design. It does a good job of taking advantage of the underneath man to man, as covering Shipley is a pretty hard ask for a linebacker.
After the Duke game, I was critical of the seeming lack of imagination from the new offense. Against, FSU, we saw more of what I think we were expecting, with more motions and several new formations. We also saw more of the split back formation that I think is a winning package for us, and we ran some of the same plays that we had success with vs Duke out of different formations and personnel packages.
Motion is such a critical thing to bring to the table vs a defense. Most defenses are splitting their defenses down the middle, playing one coverage against the strong side of the formation and another coverage against the weak side. By motioning players, it forces the defense to realign and reverse assignments. It also screws with their count. In the modern day match zone coverage, defenders are watching for routes from specific players based on where they line up. They’re numbered 1, 2, 3 etc. So when a player motions, it can change the numbering. The Will linebacker might have number 1 in formation, but a motion can suddenly change who number 1 is. This is how you create confusion in the defense and when you can roll out brand new formations and motions, the defense hasn’t been able to practice against it so they’re having to figure everything out on the fly.
If you want to watch an offense that does a great job of using motion to fluster defenses, Mike McDaniel and the Dolphins are driving defenses crazy every week with multiple pre-snap motions. Now, they have several guys with elite speed that help make what they’re doing work, but Tyreek Hill isn’t streaking open down the field just because he’s fast, its because McDaniel is able to hide him and create good matchups through motion.
This is why you see bunch formations have success against match zone coverages. you long time readers of My Thoughts (Long) will remember me talking about this in our games vs Alabama. We absolutely killed them with bunch formations that screw up their numbers count and make it very difficult for them to identify who has what. In 2018, Saban even commented on it at half time because we lifted a lot of bunch plays from other teams that had played them (particularly UGA in the SEC championship). Of course, we had a vastly superior QB and WR group, so we were able to have more success with these plays than SEC teams did vs Alabama.
And we bunched up a lot vs Florida State. We also motioned Shipley out wide several time and created 4x1 formations which typically mean you’re getting 1 on 1 single coverage on the weak Side. But we were really never able to take advantage of this and throw up 50/50 balls and win on them. I think in years past we’ve seen Clemson be too liberal with those deep balls, essentially just throwing it up every time we got single coverage but we no longer had the personnel to win those matchups consistently. I think in the FSU game Clemson was too conservative here. You need to push a few of them down the field to force the defense to play back and give you more space in the box. But then again, do we really have the personnel now to win those matchups? Not sure.
On the offensive line, I’d really love to have a more complete breakdown for you, but as always the offensive line never plays as poorly as people initially think after the game. We did struggle with their big interior, but on the whole we protected well and ran the ball well. Consistently, the man making the tackle is the man who can’t be accounted for. There were certainly times we were beaten, but this theory that the OL sucks is just not correct. I keep seeing Thomas Austin’s name grouped in with some of the others on the staff that have underperformed, and I don’t think that’s fair at this point. It might be fair 2-3 years from now, but its not fair right now. I’ll also remind everyone that there was a lot of clamoring about how much the OL sucked and how Robbie Caldwell needed to retire when he was coaching offensive lines that won national championships.
Offensive line is just such an easy target because you can’t really see what’s happening in there live. You just see the back get stopped and the line or the QB get pressured and its easy to say the line isn’t blocking, but often there are other things happening that result in a play looking ugly.
I know there’s been some consternation about blocking on the goal line, but remember on the goal line its 11 defenders vs 9 blockers. The back is going to have to make a man miss to score and early in the game Shipley simply wasn’t doing this in short yardage. I even called it out in the IGT that Maffah is a much better choice in short yardage because he more consistently hits the LOS with violence and I think has better vision than Shipley. Shipley too often runs right into the back of the OL and misses the hole, and early in the FSU game he seemed to be running a little timid. He got better as the game went on and Shipley has shown he can be a physical runner, but there were a couple of short yardage plays where the back comes up against a man that can’t be accounted for in the blocking scheme, and he has to make him miss And the best way to do that in short yardage is to put your shoulder down and attack him.
Losing Parks was a significant factor as well. Parks isn’t a perfect player (and I still contend he’s better at tackle) but he is very physical. Mayes is a solid player, probably more athletic than Parks, but he had a hard time with some of the physicality inside going against bigger defenders. This was especially true in pass rush, where he got knocked back a few times. Putnam was able to help him out and keep defenders off the QB, but a weak link does impact your overall blocking schemes and tends to leave someone on an island where they don’t need to be.
This OL isn’t elite, but they are far from terrible And far from performing at a level that would result in a job loss for their position coach.
I’ll try to have more in depth analysis with clips in the future.
On defense, to me the big stand out was XT. He is playing at a level that I don’t think we’ve seen him play at, at least consistently, since 2018. He’s been through a lot, we know about his medical issues, and he’s had some other things going on in his life that have hindered his development. But he looks good, he’s playing well, and seems to be bringing a significant effort.
But, he’s just not a defensive end. He is not a hands down defensive end at his current weight (and he needs to be at this weight to be an elite player) and he’s not a defensive end in the NFL. He’s a pass rushing OLB In a 3-4 defense. Now we don’t run the 3-4 which is why he‘s a hand down end, and I think he can do that in passing situations. But he struggles in the run game against big, physical blockers and got dragged by the RB a couple of times as well. But he’s an elite pass rusher who popped off the screen and gave FSU trouble all day.
Ruke also popped on the screen and brought a lot of physicality, putting linemen in the dirt on multiple occasions.
But the guy who looks the best to me is TJ Parker. He might be our most complete defensive end on the roster right now, he‘s a special player with a very bright future. I do believe he’ll need to bulk up a bit so that he can stay strong against the run, but he’s excellent at taking on and getting off blocks and I watch him take on bigger guys and beat them because he really understands how to play with leverage and use the power in his hips.
Our LBs, however, just look poor. They’ve looked slow and out of position. I think Wes has shown he’s able to draw up good blitz packages for his LBs, but when asking them to read and react, these guys have not delivered on their promise, in my opinion.
Obviously it was very disappointing to not get the win. The big sack/fumble, I don’t know whose responsibility that was. The blitz came from so far back that its hard to blame Maffah for not seeing him and staying in to block. Hell, we don’t even know if he was supposed to block at all. He seemed to go into a route pretty quickly and I’m not sure that pass pro was even a part of that play for him. Klub’s got to the be the one to recognize that and adjust protection or simply get the ball out more quickly.
And what do you even say about the kicker situation? Strong chance a missed kick could cost us another game this season, and I would urge Dabo to hit the portal for a big time kicker in the offseason.
I expect us to handle Wake Saturday, Our DL will significantly outmatch Wake’s OL and I expect that to show. Wake will certainly have a plan for their short pass game and misdirection in the run game, and they’ll probably have some success with it, but its hard to win a game where you’re just physically outmatched up front. I’m hoping to see continued efficiency from Klub and the offense and another solid performance against a “quality“ opponent to help build Klub’s confidence as we head into a pretty difficult portion of our schedule.
We’ve got a tough road ahead of us, but I’m encouraged by the direction this team seems to be trending in and I think we’ve still got personnel advantages over most of the teams we’ll play for the rest of the year. And besides, we all know Clemson plays its best when no one believes they can do it.
Go Tigers!
That was what Bobby Bowden said after losing to Clemson for the first time since joining the ACC in 2003. A game which would have huge consequences on the future of Clemson football, as a loss would have all but assured a staff change and, most likely, would have meant that Dabo Swinney would have become a highly successful commercial real estate developer instead of a 2 time national championship head coach.
The 2003 win was also seminal (Seminole?) in that it confirmed that the gap between Florida State and Clemson (and the rest of the ACC) was, in fact, shrinking. Clemson had athletes on the field that could compete against FSU, and not only did they compete that night but they absolutely dominated a FSU team with its eyes towards yet another appearance in the national championship game. Clemson, as we know, would go on to beat Florida State again in 2005, 2006, and 2007 - a win streak which would have been entirely unfathomable only a few years earlier when FSU had the college football world in a virtual strangle hold as a dynasty so dominant that its still rather shocking they only got a couple of national championships out of that run. That loss to Clemson in 2003 was, I think, a watershed moment that indicated the dynasty was coming to an end.
Fast forward to a couple of Saturdays ago and Florida State came into Clemson with an 8 game losing streak and facing a Clemson team that was hungry, starving, to show that it was still a national player. I wrote that this could be another watershed moment in ACC football as Florida State wrests back control of the conference away from a Clemson dynasty that was on the way down. And while FSU did come out victorious, it didn’t quite feel like the decisive victory that FSU was likely looking for. It didn’t really even feel like FSU had proven they were the better team.
I know we don’t like to talk about “moral victories” but Clemson planted its flag and said that we aren’t just going to go away silently. Klubnik and the offense showed dramatic improvement, and the Clemson D-line flexed its muscle and showed that its still an elite group that should be respected and feared. The dynasty may indeed be on a downward swing, but it isn’t quite over yet. Clemson won’t deliver high level accomplishments like a playoff appearance in 2023, but I think that FSU loss still gave Clemson fans hope for a strong run to close out the season And the possibility of a rematch with Florida State in Charlotte on December 22nd. A 10-2 Clemson finish with wins over Miami, UNC, Notre Dame, and South Carolina would be difficult to frown on too much.
As a disclaimer before I dive into an FSU game breakdown - I was only able to see snippets of the Syracuse game, so its very possible I‘ll address something in this post that the Syracuse game might have otherwise changed my perspective on.
I’ll be right honest with you in that I really don’t have many clips to show, the time I have available for clipping plays has been, well, clipped by work demands and generally getting older and more tired. So you’ll have to trust me on some of this.
Anyway. Offensively there were two big stand out negatives for me, and @Larry_Williams hit on them in his thursday review last week. Our playcalling on third downs was head scratching in some key moments, and we really didn’t do a good job of making FSU pay for the amount of cover zero they played.
There were multiple QB run calls on 3rd downs inside the red zone. The first one was more of a straight up draw and went nowhere. The 2nd was an actual QB power complete with pulling linemen and both of these plays were beaten by cover 0 blitzes.
I think most of you know what cover 0 means, but just in case - cover 0 means that the defense has no safety help over the top so they are playing true man to man across the board, and are typically rushing 7 at the QB. This is sometimes referred to as a “joker” blitz because “its a gamble.“ Get it? Like a deck of cards has a joker in it? A true joker blitz is actually an 8 man pressure, but I digress.
Cover 0 is going to require quick, short passes by the QB, as it is really not possible to block all the pass rushers, but there is definitely some opportunity in the secondary if you can beat a guy off the line. Fades and other quick hitting 50/50 balls are also a way to get a defense to come out of cover 0 and play more conservatively which. Even against really good passing teams, you’ll see defenses play cover 0 as a situational blitz, an attempt to change up the QB’s tempo and try and make a play. But most defenses won’t regularly stay in cover 0 unless they really don’t have a lot of respect for the passing game - particularly the WR’s ability to win man to man matchups quickly.
FSU didn’t play cover 0 the whole game, obviously, but in the first half Clemson did a really great job of showing that it could move the ball against a softer defense, both on the ground and through the air. Klubnik played much more efficiently than he did against Duke, and we were able to move the ball on the ground when FSU didn’t bring a man down. At some point FSU decided to really go heavy with a cover 0 package and send 7 guys to the LOS to attack the run game, pressure the QB, and force our WRs to win physical matchups outside.
This was especially true in the red zone, where cover 0 becomes less risky due to the shrunken field and the lack of opportunity to beat a defender over the top. I think that this is why Clemson called 2 QB runs and a disastrous WR screen on 3rd downs in the red zone. We hoped that we could take advantage of their blitzes and pop a big play. In truth, the QB run in the 4th quarter had some promise to it. It was well blocked and there was space for Klub to go, but the space was just too compacted with the number of bodies that were attacking the LOS and Klub couldn’t quite get to the outside quickly enough. It was actually the DE that Klub was reading that made the tackle. If Klub has just a little more space to get out of that guy’s reach, there’s a chance that play does pop for a first down. The other 2 never really had a chance.
I also think these calls are indicative of the staff’s uncertainty about Klubnik, who prior to the FSU game had looked jittery and had a tendency to just throw the ball up for grabs. Klub, however, looked much improved in this game. He was much more settled and confident in the pocket, showing some strong throws, including one early to the opposite sideline that was really impressive and showed why Klubnik’s arm had him rated 5 stars out of high school.
Klubnik did still struggle with short ball accuracy, however, and there was at least one throw to Shipley that was almost certainly at touchdown if he had led Shipley better, and an easy play was turned into a difficult one by a throw that was behind Shipley. This was on one of the circle routes that we ran with Ship a few times in the game, and I liked that Play design. It does a good job of taking advantage of the underneath man to man, as covering Shipley is a pretty hard ask for a linebacker.
After the Duke game, I was critical of the seeming lack of imagination from the new offense. Against, FSU, we saw more of what I think we were expecting, with more motions and several new formations. We also saw more of the split back formation that I think is a winning package for us, and we ran some of the same plays that we had success with vs Duke out of different formations and personnel packages.
Motion is such a critical thing to bring to the table vs a defense. Most defenses are splitting their defenses down the middle, playing one coverage against the strong side of the formation and another coverage against the weak side. By motioning players, it forces the defense to realign and reverse assignments. It also screws with their count. In the modern day match zone coverage, defenders are watching for routes from specific players based on where they line up. They’re numbered 1, 2, 3 etc. So when a player motions, it can change the numbering. The Will linebacker might have number 1 in formation, but a motion can suddenly change who number 1 is. This is how you create confusion in the defense and when you can roll out brand new formations and motions, the defense hasn’t been able to practice against it so they’re having to figure everything out on the fly.
If you want to watch an offense that does a great job of using motion to fluster defenses, Mike McDaniel and the Dolphins are driving defenses crazy every week with multiple pre-snap motions. Now, they have several guys with elite speed that help make what they’re doing work, but Tyreek Hill isn’t streaking open down the field just because he’s fast, its because McDaniel is able to hide him and create good matchups through motion.
This is why you see bunch formations have success against match zone coverages. you long time readers of My Thoughts (Long) will remember me talking about this in our games vs Alabama. We absolutely killed them with bunch formations that screw up their numbers count and make it very difficult for them to identify who has what. In 2018, Saban even commented on it at half time because we lifted a lot of bunch plays from other teams that had played them (particularly UGA in the SEC championship). Of course, we had a vastly superior QB and WR group, so we were able to have more success with these plays than SEC teams did vs Alabama.
And we bunched up a lot vs Florida State. We also motioned Shipley out wide several time and created 4x1 formations which typically mean you’re getting 1 on 1 single coverage on the weak Side. But we were really never able to take advantage of this and throw up 50/50 balls and win on them. I think in years past we’ve seen Clemson be too liberal with those deep balls, essentially just throwing it up every time we got single coverage but we no longer had the personnel to win those matchups consistently. I think in the FSU game Clemson was too conservative here. You need to push a few of them down the field to force the defense to play back and give you more space in the box. But then again, do we really have the personnel now to win those matchups? Not sure.
On the offensive line, I’d really love to have a more complete breakdown for you, but as always the offensive line never plays as poorly as people initially think after the game. We did struggle with their big interior, but on the whole we protected well and ran the ball well. Consistently, the man making the tackle is the man who can’t be accounted for. There were certainly times we were beaten, but this theory that the OL sucks is just not correct. I keep seeing Thomas Austin’s name grouped in with some of the others on the staff that have underperformed, and I don’t think that’s fair at this point. It might be fair 2-3 years from now, but its not fair right now. I’ll also remind everyone that there was a lot of clamoring about how much the OL sucked and how Robbie Caldwell needed to retire when he was coaching offensive lines that won national championships.
Offensive line is just such an easy target because you can’t really see what’s happening in there live. You just see the back get stopped and the line or the QB get pressured and its easy to say the line isn’t blocking, but often there are other things happening that result in a play looking ugly.
I know there’s been some consternation about blocking on the goal line, but remember on the goal line its 11 defenders vs 9 blockers. The back is going to have to make a man miss to score and early in the game Shipley simply wasn’t doing this in short yardage. I even called it out in the IGT that Maffah is a much better choice in short yardage because he more consistently hits the LOS with violence and I think has better vision than Shipley. Shipley too often runs right into the back of the OL and misses the hole, and early in the FSU game he seemed to be running a little timid. He got better as the game went on and Shipley has shown he can be a physical runner, but there were a couple of short yardage plays where the back comes up against a man that can’t be accounted for in the blocking scheme, and he has to make him miss And the best way to do that in short yardage is to put your shoulder down and attack him.
Losing Parks was a significant factor as well. Parks isn’t a perfect player (and I still contend he’s better at tackle) but he is very physical. Mayes is a solid player, probably more athletic than Parks, but he had a hard time with some of the physicality inside going against bigger defenders. This was especially true in pass rush, where he got knocked back a few times. Putnam was able to help him out and keep defenders off the QB, but a weak link does impact your overall blocking schemes and tends to leave someone on an island where they don’t need to be.
This OL isn’t elite, but they are far from terrible And far from performing at a level that would result in a job loss for their position coach.
I’ll try to have more in depth analysis with clips in the future.
On defense, to me the big stand out was XT. He is playing at a level that I don’t think we’ve seen him play at, at least consistently, since 2018. He’s been through a lot, we know about his medical issues, and he’s had some other things going on in his life that have hindered his development. But he looks good, he’s playing well, and seems to be bringing a significant effort.
But, he’s just not a defensive end. He is not a hands down defensive end at his current weight (and he needs to be at this weight to be an elite player) and he’s not a defensive end in the NFL. He’s a pass rushing OLB In a 3-4 defense. Now we don’t run the 3-4 which is why he‘s a hand down end, and I think he can do that in passing situations. But he struggles in the run game against big, physical blockers and got dragged by the RB a couple of times as well. But he’s an elite pass rusher who popped off the screen and gave FSU trouble all day.
Ruke also popped on the screen and brought a lot of physicality, putting linemen in the dirt on multiple occasions.
But the guy who looks the best to me is TJ Parker. He might be our most complete defensive end on the roster right now, he‘s a special player with a very bright future. I do believe he’ll need to bulk up a bit so that he can stay strong against the run, but he’s excellent at taking on and getting off blocks and I watch him take on bigger guys and beat them because he really understands how to play with leverage and use the power in his hips.
Our LBs, however, just look poor. They’ve looked slow and out of position. I think Wes has shown he’s able to draw up good blitz packages for his LBs, but when asking them to read and react, these guys have not delivered on their promise, in my opinion.
Obviously it was very disappointing to not get the win. The big sack/fumble, I don’t know whose responsibility that was. The blitz came from so far back that its hard to blame Maffah for not seeing him and staying in to block. Hell, we don’t even know if he was supposed to block at all. He seemed to go into a route pretty quickly and I’m not sure that pass pro was even a part of that play for him. Klub’s got to the be the one to recognize that and adjust protection or simply get the ball out more quickly.
And what do you even say about the kicker situation? Strong chance a missed kick could cost us another game this season, and I would urge Dabo to hit the portal for a big time kicker in the offseason.
I expect us to handle Wake Saturday, Our DL will significantly outmatch Wake’s OL and I expect that to show. Wake will certainly have a plan for their short pass game and misdirection in the run game, and they’ll probably have some success with it, but its hard to win a game where you’re just physically outmatched up front. I’m hoping to see continued efficiency from Klub and the offense and another solid performance against a “quality“ opponent to help build Klub’s confidence as we head into a pretty difficult portion of our schedule.
We’ve got a tough road ahead of us, but I’m encouraged by the direction this team seems to be trending in and I think we’ve still got personnel advantages over most of the teams we’ll play for the rest of the year. And besides, we all know Clemson plays its best when no one believes they can do it.
Go Tigers!
