Clemson football: All success starts up-front offensively & defensively

All success starts up-front for Clemson football

The success of the Clemson football program moving forward isn’t going to be about how many flashy athletes it brings in, but the development it produces up-front.

A look back at the 2020 Clemson football season and you’ll quickly be able to identify the problems and struggles that the team faced. The Tigers finished the year with another 10-win season that included an ACC Championship and a CFB Playoff berth, but they were embarrassed in the CFB Playoff semifinals by a highly-motivated Ohio State team.

It’s easy to look at the ‘flashy’ athletes and think about those talented playmakers- like Trevor Lawrence and Travis Etienne, for example- but if we learned anything this past year, it’s that you can have the best quarterback and best running back in the nation and if your offensive line can’t get the job done consistently up-front, it’s going to impede their success. The same can be said about defense.

Moving forward, Clemson football has to put an emphasis on getting better along the lines of scrimmage

Do you remember the last time we saw the Tigers win the National Championship? It wasn’t that long ago.

Back in the 2018 season, Clemson had a solid offensive line and the Tigers had an absolutely unreal defensive line that simply couldn’t be denied. The ‘Power Rangers’ made things extremely difficult on opposing quarterbacks- and they basically took away the running game week-in and week-out. The result? The Tiger secondary had a little bit of a cushion to make up for any deficiencies.

When you dominate the lines of scrimmage- like Clemson did that season- it’s tough to be beaten, especially when you look at the talent the Tigers have brought in consistently at the skill positions.

The problem during the 2020 season is that the Tigers were the ones who were pushed around more times than not. Both the offensive and defensive line struggled to get anything going consistently.

The defensive ends couldn’t create any type of consistent pass-rush and that’s why we saw Brent Venables begin to use freshman OLB Trenton Simpson in the role of edge-rusher to try and create a pass-rush.

The good news? The Tigers return plenty of talent on the defensive line. You’ve got two second-year guys who are going to be superstars in Bryan Bresee and Myles Murphy. You’ve got plenty of other promising and established talent around them, as well. Tyler Davis, Xavier Thomas, Justin Foster, K.J. Henry and Darnell Jefferies are all returning, in addition to some of the youngsters who could make an impact.

On the offensive side of the ball, the line was just knocked off the point of attack too often. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that they were just beaten on too many occasions.

The good news? You return basically everyone from last year’s line- with the exception of Jackson Carman and most likely Cade Stewart- and they’ll all have another year in the system to develop and grow together. You don’t find many offensive linemen who can come in and contribute right out of high school, but many of those young- and bigger bodies- are beginning to grow up. They’ll be much more prepared to make an impact this coming year than last and that will be even more prevalent during the 2022 season.

Success on the defensive line makes the secondary better. Success on the offensive line makes the skill position players better.

This offseason, it’s all about development, growth and subsequent success on the lines of scrimmage.