Clemson football: 5 areas to place blame in loss to Notre Dame

2. Questionable coaching decisions & officiating

Let’s not pretend that there weren’t some factors outside of the player’s hands that attributed to the loss Saturday, as well.

Everyone- and I mean everyone- wanted to focus on the play where the officials picked up a pass-interference call on Clemson football, but no one wanted to talk about the blunders by this  crew that went against the Tigers the entire night.

Here’s just a few:

• You can find 100 instances of uncalled holding against Notre Dame’s offensive line and wide receivers
• Late in the game, Clemson was called for holding. Notre Dame declined, meaning the clock should’ve run. It didn’t and that gave the Irish an estimated extra 25 seconds. Oh, by the way, they scored with 22 seconds remaining in the game. That also saved Notre Dame a timeout.
• A late hit call on Clemson gave Notre Dame a fresh set of downs when they would’ve been behind the sticks following a holding that was finally called.

In addition to bad officiating, the Tiger coaching staff had their fair share of blunders.

They didn’t even take a shot down the field and instead kneeled to go to overtime- knowing, by the way, that the defense was gassed. Tony Elliott continued to call runs up the middle even when they weren’t working. They had a chance to ice the game and instead elected to basically free the give the ball back to Notre Dame- on what would be the game-tying drive- running the ball twice to begin the drive instead of playing to win.

Ultimately, the Clemson football coaching staff played ‘not to lose’ rather than ‘playing to win’ Saturday night and it cost them.