Clemson Football: Trevor Lawrence wasn’t helped by WRs on deep balls

Trevor Lawrence wasn’t helped on deep ball throws during the 2019 Clemson football season

As we look back at the 2019 Clemson football season, one statistic really stands out when it comes to Trevor Lawrence and the deep ball.

Lawrence had his moments during the 2019 season where Clemson football fans questioned decisions or wondered what was happening, but he still turned his sophomore campaign into one of the most successful seasons in program history before it was all said and done.

Though the Tigers didn’t win the National Title, they did finish the regular season undefeated, won the ACC Championship, beat Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl and made a National Championship appearance.

Many who are nitpicking Trevor Lawrence’s season want to point to times where he was inaccurate, but it’s also clear he wasn’t helped by his wide receivers throughout the season.

Clemson football had an enormous amount of drops

According to ESPN’s David Hale, Clemson had 23 drops on throws of 10 yards or more last season.

No Power-5 program has had more than 20 in a single season since 2012 and Clemson had just 26 total in the previous three seasons combined.

That tells a story that many want to forget when they look at Lawrence’s season in a vacuum.

It’s not to say that the wide receivers were bad or that Lawrence didn’t have times where he simply missed his man- because he did- but you also have to admit that he didn’t have as much help as normal.

If just half of those dropped passes are caught, we could be talking about an extra 200-400 yards and potentially a few more touchdowns on his stat line. When a pass is dropped, it also throws off the timing of the offense.

As we head into the 2020 Clemson football season, the Tigers will need to clean up some of those drops. As a result, they’ll become even more lethal to opposing defenses.