Clemson football: Offensive line has to find their identity quickly

Clemson football isn’t in their championship phase yet.

Any real Clemson football has learned by now that the Tigers have four phases during each college football season. We all look forward to the championship phase – the middle of November through January when they are winning the division, the conference, state title, bowl game, and hopefully a competing for a national title.

While this was only week two, there is something that I have seen over the last two weeks that is alarming. That would be the play of the offensive line.

As I responded to many tweets yesterday, I said the same thing many times – scoreboard watching is for fans that do not understand the intricacies of the game. As someone that played on the offensive for most of 20 years through various levels, they are a group that I always take a special interest in.

The OL is always the heartbeat of a team and teams cannot win a title of any sort if that group isn’t playing its best football.

What the Clemson football offensive line group has shown the first two weeks isn’t good.

The Tigers’ offensive line was more than 70 pounds heavier than that of the Citadel defensive line, yet the Tigers could not run the ball between the tackles. Need proof – go back and rewatch the game and specifically look at all the goal line and short-yardage situations from yesterday.

The Clemson football offensive line could not move and re-establish a line of scrimmage against a much smaller FCS opponent. On the play where Trevor Lawrence scored his third rushing touchdown of the year, the first two attempts were in the middle of the offensive line and they got nothing with Travis Etienne. The play that Trevor scored on was off tackle.

While many were complaining about the lack of production in the second half while the second, third, and fourth teamers were in the field I was cringing at the play of the first, second, third, and fourth team offensive line.

They were unable to create space or move the line of scrimmage in the run game. From a pass protection standpoint, they did just fine. No quarterback hurries and just one sack.

In their first two games, Clemson football rushed for just a combined 347 yards against Wake Forest and Citadel, the two easiest opponents on their schedule in 2020 and most of that was off tackle. To win titles you have to be able to run between the tackles and pick up tough yards.

Hopefully, this will be something that Robbie Caldwell addresses and stresses over the coming weeks and hopefully, we will see this very talented Clemson football offensive line will find themselves and establish their chemistry in the coming weeks.