During his final in-depth interview before the season opener, Dabo Swinney sat down with radio man Tim Bourret and discussed the keys to the game.
In a chat that aired about 15 minutes before kickoff, Swinney predicted Duke's defense would sit back and try to keep everything in front of it.
The strategy, to take away big plays and make Clemson execute down the field, should be familiar to the Tigers. It was a popular approach in 2022 and 2021 as executing down the field became a lot harder without Trevor Lawrence, Travis Etienne and others.
Speaking of Etienne: He averaged 7.13 yards per carry over his career.
Over the past two-plus seasons (including Monday's opener), Clemson has averaged 5.9 yards per pass.
Including these clips in the losses:
2021
Georgia: 4.8
N.C. State: 4.3
Pittsburgh: 4.7
2022
Notre Dame: 4.8
South Carolina: 3.4
Tennessee: 5.7
2023
Duke: 4.9
That's a problem. A big problem.
And the passing numbers are in part reflective of how defenses have played this offense since Lawrence left the building following the 2020 season (he averaged 9.4 yards per pass that year, in case you were wondering).
Anyway, Swinney's point entering the Duke game was that the offense was going to have to be patient and bide its time for explosive plays downfield.
If you do enough with the running game and short- and medium-range passing game, you get those safeties creeping down and create 1-on-1 opportunities downfield.
But the offense's comportment to start, embodied by the guy taking the snaps, was pretty far from composed or methodical enough for the big-picture plan to take shape.
Finding a way to settle down Cade Klubnik surely has to rank high on the list for Garrett Riley and Dabo Swinney as they move through these two weeks knowing in the back of their minds what awaits Sept. 23.
Here we take a deeper look at Klubnik's game through some of the snapshots that stuck out to us (and, as always, y'all feel totally free to weigh in and point out where you think I might be off on some diagnoses):
The defensive end chases the GT counter here, so I'd imagine Klubnik is supposed to pull it and pick up a few yards off the back side.
Later in the first quarter, it was easy to wonder why the staff played it so conservatively on third-and-6 by calling this screen.
(As in: "Come on! This is the same crap play-calling we saw the last two years!")
But, well, when you've seen things like this it's hard to really fault them for trying to play it safe:
Go back and look at Klubnik locking in on Jake Briningstool on the near interception over the middle. Beaux Collins looks to be open in the right flat. But in addition to throwing to a covered receiver, Klubnik brings the safety over by staring down Briningstool.
Not really sure what to make of the deep ball. Duke is clearly playing the pass here, with two guys on Antonio Williams and two guys on Cole Turner.
Maybe this fits into the category of chucking it deep just so Duke knows the threat is there. And I sort of get that thinking.
But still ... pretty fortunate it wasn't picked off.
You could perhaps argue he was just late on it. Which we've seen before:
Regardless, they're going to have to find better ways to throw it deep than just throwing it up into coverage. Because you can only get lucky so many times:
I thought we saw some good things from Klubnik on Monday. His arm strength on deep balls is in some question, but the guy really showed some juice on the opposite-hash throws that you simply have to make.
I also liked the way Riley rolled him out here to get him throwing on the run:
But a fascinating sequence after the above play:
The Tigers are aggressive with the tempo, as they should be. This is something everyone wanted to see more of, and Riley delivers it.
But sometimes there can be a catch, as there was here.
On the previous play Duke was in zone.
But they switched to man, and Clemson had a play called for zone. Or at least that's my interpretation of it.
So you can see here, right before the play, the DB pointing out his man (Antonio Williams).
And he chases him across the formation and makes a nice play for a loss of 3.
This is the game-within-the-game type of stuff that fascinates me. Not saying at all here that Clemson shouldn't have gone fast. Just pointing out that sometimes there are casualties to going fast, in this case eliminating the time to recognize the change to man.
It could also be argued that this was still a 1-on-1 matchup between Williams and the DB, and that's what you want.
Sometimes you have to tip your cap to the other guy for a great play.
Speaking of Klubnik's velocity, he showed off some here on this third down. But Turner dropped it.
Shared some of the Orange Bowl clips earlier. If you go back and watch that game one of the takeaways with Klubnik is he really needed to work on seeing the field better instead of locking in on one guy.
Had the same impression after the Duke game.
Can't say for sure that Klubnik made the wrong decision here. But look at the bottom of the screen and you'll see Phil Mafah has a lot of room to run:
In a chat that aired about 15 minutes before kickoff, Swinney predicted Duke's defense would sit back and try to keep everything in front of it.
The strategy, to take away big plays and make Clemson execute down the field, should be familiar to the Tigers. It was a popular approach in 2022 and 2021 as executing down the field became a lot harder without Trevor Lawrence, Travis Etienne and others.
Speaking of Etienne: He averaged 7.13 yards per carry over his career.
Over the past two-plus seasons (including Monday's opener), Clemson has averaged 5.9 yards per pass.
Including these clips in the losses:
2021
Georgia: 4.8
N.C. State: 4.3
Pittsburgh: 4.7
2022
Notre Dame: 4.8
South Carolina: 3.4
Tennessee: 5.7
2023
Duke: 4.9
That's a problem. A big problem.
And the passing numbers are in part reflective of how defenses have played this offense since Lawrence left the building following the 2020 season (he averaged 9.4 yards per pass that year, in case you were wondering).
Anyway, Swinney's point entering the Duke game was that the offense was going to have to be patient and bide its time for explosive plays downfield.
If you do enough with the running game and short- and medium-range passing game, you get those safeties creeping down and create 1-on-1 opportunities downfield.
But the offense's comportment to start, embodied by the guy taking the snaps, was pretty far from composed or methodical enough for the big-picture plan to take shape.
Finding a way to settle down Cade Klubnik surely has to rank high on the list for Garrett Riley and Dabo Swinney as they move through these two weeks knowing in the back of their minds what awaits Sept. 23.
Here we take a deeper look at Klubnik's game through some of the snapshots that stuck out to us (and, as always, y'all feel totally free to weigh in and point out where you think I might be off on some diagnoses):
The defensive end chases the GT counter here, so I'd imagine Klubnik is supposed to pull it and pick up a few yards off the back side.
Later in the first quarter, it was easy to wonder why the staff played it so conservatively on third-and-6 by calling this screen.
(As in: "Come on! This is the same crap play-calling we saw the last two years!")
But, well, when you've seen things like this it's hard to really fault them for trying to play it safe:
Go back and look at Klubnik locking in on Jake Briningstool on the near interception over the middle. Beaux Collins looks to be open in the right flat. But in addition to throwing to a covered receiver, Klubnik brings the safety over by staring down Briningstool.
Not really sure what to make of the deep ball. Duke is clearly playing the pass here, with two guys on Antonio Williams and two guys on Cole Turner.
Maybe this fits into the category of chucking it deep just so Duke knows the threat is there. And I sort of get that thinking.
But still ... pretty fortunate it wasn't picked off.
You could perhaps argue he was just late on it. Which we've seen before:
Regardless, they're going to have to find better ways to throw it deep than just throwing it up into coverage. Because you can only get lucky so many times:
I thought we saw some good things from Klubnik on Monday. His arm strength on deep balls is in some question, but the guy really showed some juice on the opposite-hash throws that you simply have to make.
I also liked the way Riley rolled him out here to get him throwing on the run:
But a fascinating sequence after the above play:
The Tigers are aggressive with the tempo, as they should be. This is something everyone wanted to see more of, and Riley delivers it.
But sometimes there can be a catch, as there was here.
On the previous play Duke was in zone.
But they switched to man, and Clemson had a play called for zone. Or at least that's my interpretation of it.
So you can see here, right before the play, the DB pointing out his man (Antonio Williams).
And he chases him across the formation and makes a nice play for a loss of 3.
This is the game-within-the-game type of stuff that fascinates me. Not saying at all here that Clemson shouldn't have gone fast. Just pointing out that sometimes there are casualties to going fast, in this case eliminating the time to recognize the change to man.
It could also be argued that this was still a 1-on-1 matchup between Williams and the DB, and that's what you want.
Sometimes you have to tip your cap to the other guy for a great play.
Speaking of Klubnik's velocity, he showed off some here on this third down. But Turner dropped it.
Shared some of the Orange Bowl clips earlier. If you go back and watch that game one of the takeaways with Klubnik is he really needed to work on seeing the field better instead of locking in on one guy.
Had the same impression after the Duke game.
Can't say for sure that Klubnik made the wrong decision here. But look at the bottom of the screen and you'll see Phil Mafah has a lot of room to run:
