Coming into the season, there was hope that this 2021 Clemson football offense could be one of the best we’ve seen in program history.
The Tigers were talked up all offseason by the coaching staff and there were discussions about D.J. Uiagalelei being a better quarterback than Trevor Lawrence. There were discussions about how this offensive line was light years ahead of last year’s unit and there were discussions about how the Tigers were going to have towering wide receivers who made this offense a ton of fun.
None of that has come to fruition and, frankly, it’s not going to.
Clemson football fans must face a harsh reality: The offense isn’t getting fixed in 2021
At the time this is being published, Clemson is currently struggling to put up points against Syracuse.
There was hope that the Bye Week could open a door for the offense to fix some of the issues we’ve seen:
- Questionable play-calling
- Bad QB play
- Inconsistent offensive line play
- Drops by wide receivers
No one thought that all these issues would be resolved and that Clemson would magically come out and put up 50 on Syracuse, but there was hope that the Tigers could at least ‘put a stop to the bleeding’ and salvage something on this unit for this season.
After seeing the product fresh off a bye week, that’s just not looking like it’s in the cards.
This offense has flashes where it shows its potential but for some reason they’re simply not capable at playing at that level on a consistent basis. There are still far too many questionable play-calls and even when plays are there, guys aren’t converting.
DJ Uiagalelei shows flashes at times, but then he’ll have 7-straight passes where he looks mediocre. The offensive line has times where it looks great and then you’ll see two guards pulling in the same direction clearly on the wrong page.
That stuff just isn’t getting fixed this season.
We’ll keep hoping for the best, but if you can’t score on Syracuse, it’s not looking promising for you to be able to keep up with Pittsburgh or Wake Forest, and even games like Louisville, Florida State and South Carolina– where the Tigers will still be favored– will have to be ‘grind-it-out and hope for the best’ games.
Perhaps, there will be some patches and maybe the “flashes” and relying on the defense will be enough for the Tigers to get by, but there will be no “thriving” this year for this current form of the offense.
It’s not going to be much fun, but that’s just the nature of where we’re at right now.