Clemson Football: Tight ends play huge role in win over Wake
If there’s one universal complaint from Clemson football fans over the years, it’s about the usage of the tight ends since Jordan Leggett rumbled over, around and through defenses for the Tigers.
Oh sure, there were flashes and the position may even have been targeted 4 or 5 times in a game and then those would disappear for seemingly weeks on end.
The nonsense about how many plays the tight ends were on the field, just avoided the question of why they weren’t being used in the passing game – as receivers. It didn’t take a football Ph.D or 20 years of coaching to see that Davis Allen was a weapon and Jake Briningstool had incredible potential.
Of course, back during the Etienne years it was easier, and much safer, just to hand it off to Travis most of the time and gain your 6 or 7, or 60 or 70 yards.
It wasn’t lost on me that the day the offense truly broke out in 2022, is the day the tight ends were featured in the offense. Between Jake Briningstool and Davis Allen they were targeted 12 times Saturday and totalled 10 receptions for 108 yards and 3 touchdowns. That’s pretty good.
In the three games prior to this? 11 total targets between the two.
For the season, the pair has 19 catches on 23 targets for 222 yards and 4 touchdowns, which calculates out to and 82.6% completion rate and 11.7 yards per reception.
To dive a bit deeper, the pair have also combined for 76 yards after the catches and are 4 for 5 on contested catches, per PFF.com.
To top it all off they have 0 drops between them.
Since the days of Jordan Leggett, Clemson football fans have been clamoring for the tight end to be used more and Saturday they finally got their wish
The coaches say Davis Allen is the best blocking tight end they’ve had and while the PFF grades don’t necessarily reflect that, I’ll defer to the coaches on that one.
Briningstool still has work to do in that area, but they are both showing that they are weapons in this offense and it gives the defense one more thing to worry about when defending the Clemson offense.
Next. Lawrence leads Jags in rout of Chargers. dark
Or maybe it’s two more things.