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I did it. I didn't want to do it, but I did it. I watched most of the offensive snaps out of morbid curiosity. I just couldn't stand the idea of not understanding the debacle better than I did leaving the stadium. I could make this a really long posting of great detail, but truthfully it would just sound very repetitive. The truth is, that Clemson did about what I expected on defense. They fired their corners a good bit and they blitzed the A gap some, but for the most part, they kept it simple for their kids. Most likely they felt their defensive players were good enough to have a succesful day without trickeration, which would have been correct. Much of the time they kept one safety back and used the other flying up in run support. They didn't give our WRs a ton of respect. When they fired corners they rolled their safety over without a care in the world about the match up.
The Clemson players are very good all over the field. It would be really hard to find a weak spot. I give them a ton of respect because they are a hard bunch to block, even when executing well, which, unfortunately, we didn't do much of the time. The battle on the inside, you may feel was very one-sided. They gave us a tough time, but I don't think it was as one-sided as I felt it was leaving the stadium. They defeated some blocks to make tackles, they fooled our reads with quickness when left unblocked intentionally, and they made us look blind and stupid out in space trying to get a hat on them. Quite often we just passed up a would be tackler, preferring to run ahead and block somebody 5 yards further away, which makes no sense to me. I do not know what the assignments are on a given play because we use so many variations, but I feel sure they are never to let one guy run through from the second level while two of our guys take a different second level defender at the same time (after releasing). I don't have enough fingers on one hand to count the number of times that happened. I probably also don't have enough fingers one hand to count the number of plays where at least three of our players blocked nobody. Now, I am not talking about getting defeated on a block attempt. I am talking about blocking nobody, you know, running around in space and choosing nobody (or not touching anybody). You do the math, when you include unblocked players by design and add three others unaccounted for, it doesn't end well. Later on, we started running the ball effectively by slamming it up the gut, where at least, our guys seemed to know who to block. It was the only thing that worked. We did some pulling on unbalanced playside and switched with outside guys blocking down a few times to relative success, but all this stuff was happening after the game was decided. By this point, it didn't look like option football, but block every player football.
I didn't watch to the end. Maybe we got a few successful option plays in for the latter stages. I was in a daze when I left the stadium so I really don't know. You can fill me in.
What do I take away from this? Well, that Clemson is very good and they will be hard to beat. It will be interesting to see how they do against L'ville. But I also take away that we still are not executing our offense. Its maddening to be honest. We have personnel issues in places, but just plain lack of experience in others. Personally, I think the O-Line talent is there if we can develop some cohesiveness. We have a lot of guys who can run with the football pretty darned well, but if you ever wondered why CPJ put such a premium on AB and WR blocking, now you know. It gets atrocious pretty fast when it doesn't happen.
The Clemson players are very good all over the field. It would be really hard to find a weak spot. I give them a ton of respect because they are a hard bunch to block, even when executing well, which, unfortunately, we didn't do much of the time. The battle on the inside, you may feel was very one-sided. They gave us a tough time, but I don't think it was as one-sided as I felt it was leaving the stadium. They defeated some blocks to make tackles, they fooled our reads with quickness when left unblocked intentionally, and they made us look blind and stupid out in space trying to get a hat on them. Quite often we just passed up a would be tackler, preferring to run ahead and block somebody 5 yards further away, which makes no sense to me. I do not know what the assignments are on a given play because we use so many variations, but I feel sure they are never to let one guy run through from the second level while two of our guys take a different second level defender at the same time (after releasing). I don't have enough fingers on one hand to count the number of times that happened. I probably also don't have enough fingers one hand to count the number of plays where at least three of our players blocked nobody. Now, I am not talking about getting defeated on a block attempt. I am talking about blocking nobody, you know, running around in space and choosing nobody (or not touching anybody). You do the math, when you include unblocked players by design and add three others unaccounted for, it doesn't end well. Later on, we started running the ball effectively by slamming it up the gut, where at least, our guys seemed to know who to block. It was the only thing that worked. We did some pulling on unbalanced playside and switched with outside guys blocking down a few times to relative success, but all this stuff was happening after the game was decided. By this point, it didn't look like option football, but block every player football.
I didn't watch to the end. Maybe we got a few successful option plays in for the latter stages. I was in a daze when I left the stadium so I really don't know. You can fill me in.
What do I take away from this? Well, that Clemson is very good and they will be hard to beat. It will be interesting to see how they do against L'ville. But I also take away that we still are not executing our offense. Its maddening to be honest. We have personnel issues in places, but just plain lack of experience in others. Personally, I think the O-Line talent is there if we can develop some cohesiveness. We have a lot of guys who can run with the football pretty darned well, but if you ever wondered why CPJ put such a premium on AB and WR blocking, now you know. It gets atrocious pretty fast when it doesn't happen.
