The 2019 Clemson football defense is going to have a lot of new faces. How will opposing offenses attempt to attack the Tigers this season?
The 2018 Clemson football defense was the best in the nation.
Unfortunately for the Tigers, there won’t be a Christian Wilkins, Dexter Lawrence, Clelin Ferrell, Austin Bryant, Tre Lamar, Kendall Joseph, Albert Huggins or Trayvon Mullen walking through the door this season.
All of those guys have moved onto the NFL and left a lot of openings for young Tigers to prove themselves.
Though there isn’t as much experience as last year, the Tigers still have plenty of talent. The defense returns Isaiah Simmons, Tanner Muse, K’Von Wallace and AJ Terrell as starters. There’s also talented players like Xavier Thomas, Nyles Pinckney, Jordan Williams, Justin Foster, Justin Mascoll, Chad Smith, James Skalski and plenty of others that are ready to step up and make this unit an elite one yet again.
As we look at the 2019 defense, it’s clear that opposing offenses will try attack the unit in three distinct ways.
- Quick passes, opening up the bomb
The first thing we’ll see is teams trying to get the ball out of the quarterback’s hand fast to wide receivers. The passes may only go for four or five yards. Just quick slats, out routes and screens. They’re going to want to test the cornerback opposite side of AJ Terrell and the linebackers in the passing game.
What will happen from there is pretty simple. After dinking and dunking their way down the field, they’ll look to take a shot down the field and test the safeties. At times last season, both Tanner Muse and K’Von Wallace were out of position because they let their eyes deceive them. Teams are going to try and use that to their advantage.
- Test the interior line
Something that we basically haven’t seen over the past couple of seasons is teams testing the interior of the Clemson defensive line.
With Christian Wilkins and Dexter Lawrence, the only consistent success that opponents had running the ball was if they ran to the outside to the tackles or got into the second level. This year, they’re going to test Nyles Pinckney, Jordan Williams and the depth at defensive tackle.
The Tigers will need to sure up the inside of that defense and let opponents know that they aren’t going to get yardage up the middle. That’s especially important for short yardage situations.
- Up-tempo, spread out the defense
Lastly, you’re going to see teams speed up the tempo and attempt to spread out the defense. The big successes in the past against Clemson’s defenses has been with teams that were willing to change up their plans and go faster.
Tempo will test the Tigers’ depth and it will be important that they find ways to get off the field and build depth, especially in the front seven.