Five areas to place blame in the loss to Notre Dame for Clemson football
The Clemson football team lost its first regular season game in nearly a half-decade Saturday evening in a double-overtime thriller against Notre Dame.
The Tigers entered their matchup with the Fighting Irish holding a 36-game winning streak in the regular season and came away a 47-40 loser in double-overtime.
While everything is still certainly on the table for Clemson football in terms of winning the ACC Championship and getting to CFB playoff, there’s no doubt that the defeat was disappointing for Tiger fans to endure.
Here’s a look at five areas to place blame in the loss to Notre Dame for Clemson football.
5. Two veteran turnovers
We’ll go ahead and start our list off with one of the most obvious downfalls of the game: Two absolutely terrible turnovers by the Tigers’ best two playmakers.
Travis Etienne couldn’t handle a pitch from D.J. Uiagalelei in the first half. The ball bounced off his hands and straight into the hands of a Notre Dame defender, who ran it in for six.
The very next drive, Uiagalelei threw a pass right over the middle of the field that would’ve resulted in a first down. Instead, Amari Rodgers caught and fumbled it, giving the Fighting Irish a short field and that resulted in a field goal.
Notre Dame was gifted 10 points from these two blunders and you could’ve been talking about an even larger point swing considering the Irish defense had done very little to stop the Tiger offense.
4. Defense didn’t make winning plays & got beat too often
Clemson’s defense gets a lot of flack, but the truth of the matter is that the Tigers stopped the Irish for most of the game. After they gave up the early 10 points, the defense settled into the game and did a solid job- until the end of the game and overtime when they were clearly gassed.
That being said, this unit still just found itself out of position far too many times. They whiffed on arm tackles. The coverage was lacking and made it far too easy on Ian Book. The pass-rush was nonexistent in the first half.
You can’t beat a team like Notre Dame that wants to control the time of possession without creating pressure and putting them behind the sticks with negative plays. Even when the defense did get them with negative yardage, the Tigers would give up a big play that would give the Irish a fresh set of downs.
3. Bad offensive line play
Call it what you want, but this offense line has been *bad* all season long.
The unit hasn’t gotten any kind of a push in the running game and that was evident Saturday night when the Tigers rushed for just 34 yards on 33 attempts (1.0 yards per rush) on the evening.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the line broke down on several passing plays- especially any time the Tigers wanted to try and execute some longer-developing routes- and that even resulted in two bad sacks in the second overtime period that basically didn’t even give Clemson a chance to convert on the final fourth down attempt.
This offensive line has to get better. Whether or not it’s a different scheme or different players, the unit is not playing up to championship-caliber and that has to change. Hopefully it’s not too late.
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.
1. Injuries, injuries & more injuries
I know that people want to blame the offensive line, secondary and play-calling for all the Tigers’ problems and don’t get me wrong, they shoulder a fair share of the blame.
There’s no doubting that this team has a ton of development to do, but let’s also not forget this simple fact: Clemson just went up to the *now ranked* No. 2 team in the country’s house and played them to double-overtime without:
In addition to missing those guys for the entirety of the night, Clemson ended up seeing Nolan Turner, Andrew Booth Jr., Lannden Zanders and Matt Bockhorst suffer injuries that sidelined them for the remainder of the game. Oh, Bryan Bresee was also injured and played through the pain late in the game.
Take this Clemson football team at full health and they beat Notre Dame by double-digits. Sorry, not sorry.