It’s the final “Smoldering Ruin” of the Clemson Football season. As we turn the calendar to 2023, there are more questions than answers and more opinions floating around on social media than I care to take in. We can at least take a look back at and reflect on the 2022 season. But let’s look at it from a very important angle, a specific lens if you will.
How would you describe the Clemson season in 2022 in no more than 5 words? Some might say disappointing paired with other words like roller coaster or inconsistent; heck, some might even use words like mediocre or failure.
But for me, the 5 words are simple:
“A not-so-subtle fart”
Now we need context for this fart. As a lot of them do. You’ve been eating breakfast sausage and eggs every Sunday morning for the last 8 years before church. It filled you up, made you more attentive in church somehow. That’s not how most people would do it, but it works for you, and you make some of the best sausage and eggs this side of the Mississippi. And when it all comes together you can put out an absolute silent monster in the church pew.
Some thought it was impossible to pull it off, but you ate 2 helpings and surprised everyone at the youth retreat you were chaperoning in Tampa in 2016 when you ripped one off and no one knew. People thought it was pretty funny as a matter of fact.
In 2018 you managed to pull off the perfect pass. You had hit the perfect ratio of sausages, eggs, and even a little bacon. And no one could tell.
But as time went on, eating that much cured meat started to mess with you. People started to pick up on what you were putting down.
You tried to switch to some vegan bacon from California but that only made things worse.
But you doubled down. You knew this hearty breakfast has gotten you through more messages on tithing than you can count. You know you can handle it. Just try it one more time.
But in the most inopportune of times, right as Preacher Bill lowers the crowd noise down to talk about missionaries in the neediest parts of Zambia, you strain just a little too much and…..boom.
Everyone hears it. Everyone smells it. And everyone knows it was you this time. Some people even transfer to the pew across the aisle. A completely avoidable mistake, and now you’re the talk around the Quincy’s (RIP) at lunch time.
Clemson Football might have realized the mistakes of 2022 a little too late
Now, I know that’s a little crass and far-fetched to take 1:1 with Clemson’s situation, but there are several moments that Clemson’s staff probably wishes they didn’t “fart away.” The Orange Bowl, as much as people want to make it about Cade looking like a freshman, was more about the coaches’ inability to pull the trigger earlier in the season for Cade to be QB1. A stale scheme truly has caught up with the Tigers. Cutting edge schemes usually only have a shelf life of 5-7 years before people start to catch on and an over reliance on youth this year showed at critical moments.
Though a lot will be made in the next 9 months about “the direction of the program,” I’m not as comfortable with prognosticating one way or the other because that doesn’t tend to help anything.
The biggest takeaway from 2022 is also the biggest question of 2023:
Will Dabo learn?
Because if you try to triple down on breakfast sausage and eggs again, it could be more than a fart.