The Clemson football must do these three things to avoid Halloween scare vs. Boston College
The Clemson football team enters the matchup against Boston College as a massive 31.5-point favorite, but that doesn’t mean this game will be a blowout.
The Tigers were 46.5-point favorites just a week ago against the Syracuse Orange and that game never really got out of hand until the fourth quarter. In many ways, Clemson football fans could be in for a similar type of matchup this weekend.
In addition to playing a promising young team with talent, this game will be played on Halloween and we all know that weird things just seem to happen on Halloween. If that wasn’t weird enough already, the Tigers will now be without star QB Trevor Lawrence- who has tested positive for COVID-19.
Here are three things Clemson football must do to avoid a scare against the Boston College Eagles.
3. Get the offense going
The first objective is pretty simple: Get the offense going.
The Tiger offense has been inconsistent at times this season, but things looked as if they were turning around against both Miami and Georgia Tech where the unit just went off. Unfortunately, the offense creeped back into its inconsistent phase against Syracuse last weekend.
It’s not to say that they were bad (the unit did score 40 of the 47 points the Tigers tallied) but there were just too many times where they couldn’t get anything going. Passes from Trevor Lawrence were inaccurate at times. Travis Etienne wasn’t able to establish an explosive rush.
Now, Clemson won’t have Lawrence and it will be freshman D.J. Uiagalelei stepping into his place. Can the Tigers get something going with the freshman at quarterback? Will they trust him to be able to throw the ball or will they go with a run-heavy attack?
Either way, you’ve got to somehow activate the offense.
2. Force turnovers
It should be expected that Boston College QB Phil Jurkovec will throw somewhere in the range 35-50 passing attempts Saturday afternoon.
A couple of those need to belong to Clemson football.
Boston College’s offense is different from anything we’ve seen from that program in the last decade. The Eagles are a pass-first team and they are looking to open up the field with their wide receivers. Talk about a complete about-face.
The Tiger defense needs to find a way to force a couple of turnovers and allow the Eagles to make a few mistakes.
1. Fix the mistakes from a week ago
Speaking of mistakes, the biggest key for Clemson to avoid a scare against Boston College is to fix the blunders from last week.
Just to name a few:
- The offensive line needs a better effort
- We need better snaps from center
- Uiagalelei needs to be confident in his passing ability
- Etienne needs to explode for a big play
- The Clemson wide receivers need to create separation and make things a little easier for the freshman
- The Tiger front-seven needs to create pressure
- Don’t allow a blocked punt of field goal
A scare doesn’t mean an upset. But it could very well mean a close game heading into the fourth quarter.
If Clemson football wants to avoid a scare on Halloween, the Tigers need to fix their mistakes from a week ago and come out with a more focused mindset.