2018 Clemson Football Positional Grades: Defensive Tackle

The Clemson football defensive tackles were as good as any group in school history. Here’s our final grades for the position.

Over the course of the week, Rubbing the Rock has given you our final grades for several different Clemson football positions across the board.

We’ve given our grades for the entire offensive side of the ball and now we’re taking a look at the defense.

The Tiger defense was the best in the nation. Part of that had to do with the dominant defensive line, which all begins inside with the interior linemen.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the defensive tackles.

Defensive Tackle Report Card:

There will never be a duo like Christian Wilkins and Dexter Lawrence at defensive tackle. Those two guys combined for a total weight of 665 pounds and were also very athletic.

There will be plenty more dominant defensive tackles, but I don’t know that you’ll ever see two come in at the same time and get to play together like Wilkins and Lawrence.

In addition to Wilkins and Lawrence, both Albert Huggins and Nyles Pinckney provided excellent depth at the position.

For the most part, teams just weren’t able to run on the Tigers. That even continued when Dexter Lawrence went out due to a suspension.

Clemson’s defensive tackle completely clogged up the middle and took control of the interior line game after game. Opposing offensive lines just weren’t able to deal with the defensive tackles.

Wilkins was also able to get in the backfield and pressure the quarterback on passing downs on several different occasions, as well.

Overall, I don’t think that you could’ve asked for much more out of this group of defensive tackles. They dominated their opponents and basically took away the run game from every single team they faced this season.

Overall Grade: A+