Clemson Football: Five things we learned about the Tigers at Duke

Clemson Football is not fast

I took advantage of an unusually free weekend to watch quite a bit of football for the past few days, and that included Ohio State on Saturday when they traveled to Indiana. The Buckeyes got the victory, but they certainly didn’t seem quite as potent as they had in past seasons. They are also breaking in a new offensive coordinator, but I expected them to simply out-athlete the Hoosiers. Ohio State was better than IU but the gap wasn’t as large as I expected.

When I watched Florida State play LSU on Sunday, I saw two teams that weren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they were fast and quick. Receivers ran crisp routes for the Seminoles, especially Keon Coleman. Jordan Travis was able to find open receivers and make the throws. Florida State was fast. They thought fast and played fast.

Duke wasn’t particularly fast. They were average in this regard.

Clemson was worse. This team isn’t fast at all. As I said earlier, the offensive line gave Will Shipley and Mafah some big holes in the second half, and they hit them. None of them broke away to the end zone. Even on Mafah’s big 49-yard run, he was caught by the Duke defense.

You can’t teach speed. Clemson is simply lacking it right now, in all phases.