Who will call plays for Clemson football with Tony Elliott out of the Sugar Bowl?
Clemson football announced Wednesday afternoon that offensive coordinator Tony Elliott wouldn’t be making the trip to New Orleans following a positive test that will now have him sidelined and in quarantine for the matchup against the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Sources close to Tony Elliott said he is ‘feeling fine,’ according to Tigernet.
With Elliott out, the Tigers will have to adjust ‘on the fly’ as they travel down to New Orleans.
Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel reported shortly after the news that Clemson is still determining how they’ll handle play calling duties, but the expectation is that we’ll see Brandon Streeter calling the play. Elliott is expected to be available for the National Championship if the Tigers beat Ohio State, according to Thamel.
The good news for Clemson is that Elliott is expected to be available for the College Football Playoff title game on Jan. 11, a source said. He's only expected to miss Friday's game. https://t.co/pOp8qA0Bj3
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) December 30, 2020
Clemson football will miss Tony Elliott, but they’re still in capable hands
It’s never optimal to have a coach ruled out for a game just a couple of days before kickoff, but the good news is that the Tigers have a really good offensive mind in Brandon Streeter to help shoulder some of the burden with Elliott out.
In addition to Streeter, we should expect Trevor Lawrence to have some freedom to adjust to what he is seeing and make play calls himself at times (he already had that anyway) and we should expect that Dabo Swinney will have his fair share of input on how the offense is run as the game plays out.
If Streeter does get the bulk of the play calls, we can expect that he’ll look to attack the Ohio State secondary and take a few more shots than we might see from Elliott.
One thing that I do know for certain: Swinney already had a plan for if this certain thing happened. The Tigers might be working out the kinks- as Thamel reported- but this isn’t something that hasn’t already crossed Swinney’s mind before.
Another big question here is contact tracing and who might now be unavailable for Clemson football now due to Elliott’s positive test. The Tigers are scheduled to make the trip to New Orleans later this afternoon.