Clemson football: UGA loss shows the legitimate problems in Tiger program

The legitimate problems of the Clemson football program were on full display Saturday evening when the Tigers did battle with the Georgia Bulldogs in Bank of America Stadium.

Clemson has become synonymous over the past couple of years of running roughshod through the ACC and then getting beat by a legitimate opponent. The Tigers had an opportunity to put that narrative to bed, but instead the offense was absolutely atrocious and didn’t even belong on the same field as the Georgia defense.

The Clemson football defense played their hearts out, holding Georgia’s offense to just three points, but the effort wasn’t enough as the Dawgs capitalized on a pick-six to come away with a 10-3 win over the Tigers.

The problems facing the Clemson football program are still prevalent

There are two problems that we– and thousands of other Clemson fans– have continued to highlight as legitimate issues with this program:

1. Poor play-calling and an inability to utilize what is working.
2. An offensive line that simply can’t protect the quarterback or open up the running game against legitimate front-sevens.

If you don’t think those issues were on full display Saturday night, I don’t know what to tell you.

Tony Elliott had the ball inside the UGA 5-yard line with three downs and never once ran the ball. Despite the middle of the field being open, he never ran quick routes to activate that portion of the game. He played conservative and it came back to bite Clemson, just as it did against Ohio State and LSU– no, it wasn’t offense’s sole fault in either of those games. But it was tonight.

And it wasn’t just the poor play-calling.

The offensive line was awful. Yes, UGA has one of the best fronts– possibly the best front– in the nation, but that performance was simply embarrassing. D.J. Uiagalelei was sacked seven times and, honestly, it could’ve been more.

Uiagalelei isn’t mobile like Trevor Lawrence or Deshaun Watson and it showed. The Tiger offensive line has been shielded in the past due to the mobility of the quarterbacks, but they’re going to have the full weight of actually doing their job this season and in the opener, they absolutely fell flat on their face.

We’ll talk about Uiagalelei’s timidity and that back-breaking pick-six plenty over the course of our postgame fallout, but for now we want to focus on those two major problems that continue to rear their ugly head.

You can’t be a national championship contender with conservative offensive play-calling in this day and age of college football. I’m sorry, you just can’t. Nick Saban has reworked his offense because of that fact, but for some reason Clemson football remains in the dark.

You can’t be a national championship contender with a mediocre offensive line. This starts with recruiting, but it also has to do with development. Robbie Caldwell hasn’t gotten the job done.

This loss happened because of a multitude of errors, but those two problems– linked to Tony Elliott and Robbie Caldwell, specifically– continue to be a thorn in the side of the Tigers.