Clemson football: Tigers have to be better on third downs moving forward

Clemson football has two weeks to clean up third down production.

There are always a lot of areas that you can look at to determine just how good your football team is and Clemson football is no different.

As the Tigers enter the ‘Championship Phase’ they have to start looking more like actual champions than they have in recent weeks.

In the last two weeks, Clemson football has squared off against the Pitt Panthers and the Virginia Tech Hokies. Two teams that quite honestly should have been a cakewalk for any championship team. Yes, both scores ended up lopsided in favor of the Tigers.

However, any fan watching those two games, knows that the Tigers played just four good quarters of football in those two games.

That said, there was one stat that jumps out as alarming and one that the Clemson football coaching staff has to find a way to correct – third-down conversion on offense.

Over the last two weeks, the Tigers have converted just 10 of their 27 third-down opportunities for a conversion rate of just 37 percent. For the season, Clemson currently sits 31st nationally in third-down conversion rate at 46.5 percent.

Alabama (1), Ohio State (5), and Notre Dame (10) are all ranked in the Top 10 of college football in regards to third-down conversion rate.

The Clemson football schedule is about to get exponentially more difficult.

As the opponent is only going to get better from here on out, the focus by the offensive staff and the players on offense has to be better than it has been in recent weeks.

Clemson football offensive coordinator Tony Elliott has a propensity to run plays east to west instead of north and south – a prime example of that Saturday against the Hokies was a third and nine play and Elliott had Amari Rodgers on one side and another receiver on the other both run shallow three-yard outs.

How are the Tigers going to beat teams like Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State, Texas A&M, or Florida if they refuse to use the field – specifically the middle of the field?

The short answer is they cannot.

The Tigers have two weeks to find a better rushing identity and solve the problem of being bad on third-down conversions. If they cannot do that, this team will find itself out of the College Football Playoff for the first time since 2014.