Clemson Football lost their second season opener in the past three seasons on Monday night. The Duke Blue Devils made a statement with a victory against the Tigers, who had been a co-favorite to win the Atlantic Coast Conference this season.
While some casual fans assumed Duke would be a pushover, fans who watched Duke in 2022 knew they were good enough to give the Tigers a game. Riley Leonard had a good season behind center and was a major contributor to the Blue Devils’ offensive efforts in the opener.
At the risk of disrespecting Duke, the primary reason Clemson lost the ball game was the continual mistakes deep in Blue Devil territory when the Tigers had chances to score. In many ways, it felt like a repeat performance from last year’s Orange Bowl – plenty of yards and drives, no red zone efficiency. Sometimes it was the offense. Sometimes it was special teams.
That wasn’t the only reason, however. We learned one big thing about the defense too that wasn’t complimentary.
What did we learn from this performance by the Tigers on Monday night? Plenty, but here are the five things that stand out to me above all the rest.
I’m not seeing the “raid”
Following the discouraging loss in the Orange Bowl, Clemson made a change at offensive coordinator and brought in Garrett Riley. Riley had just led TCU’s offense to a runner-up finish in 2022, and it seemed like new leadership (from outside the current Clemson staff) and a new offensive philosophy was exactly what this team needed to get back to the elite status they enjoyed from 2015 to 2020.
We saw how much confidence the defense gleaned from the Tiger offense when Cade Klubnik stepped in for former starter DJ Uiagalelei in the ACC Championship Game last season. With Riley calling the plays in his system – generally called an ‘air raid’ offense, but termed ‘dirt raid’ by Clemson – fans expected the energy to come back into the team.
The problem on Monday was that there was very little “raid” about anything Clemson did on offense. They tried a few downfield throws, but none came close to connecting. The longest reception was a 21-yard completion to Tyler Brown.
The offensive line began to open up some big holes for the running backs in the second half. The longest play of the night was a 49-yard rush by Phil Mafah, but even it didn’t find the end zone.
There just wasn’t anything about this offense that was explosive. It’s easy to say we should have been more conservative about our expectations for the first game with a new offensive system, but on the surface, there seemed to be little difference in the way Clemson played offense Monday night.
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.
The defense has a tackling problem
The defense wasn’t great. That shouldn’t stress fans too much. It was the first game. It is not unusual for a defensive unit to be a little rusty at first. There were a few busted coverages. That happens.
The reality is that for most of the game, the defense was doing what it needed to do to win. Unfortunately, the few moments through the first three quarters when the defense broke down was when Duke took advantage.
The primary problem for the defense was bad tackling, and it wasn’t freshmen or second-stringers. It was the main guys we expected to anchor the defense.
Barrett Carter was the guy who should have wrapped up Riley Leonard but didn’t. Nate Wiggins should have been able to tackle him or get him out of bounds but instead got juked out of his shoes, and Leonard scored on a 44-yard touchdown run.
Several other players either over-pursued or took bad angles. Again, being a bit rusty should be expected. Being completely out of position or whiffing on tackles is not something you would expect from a defense that we thought could be elite, or from individuals we thought could be elite.
The wide receivers haven’t progressed
Coach Swinney told us in the preseason that if Antonio Williams, Beaux Collins, Adam Randall, Cole Turner, and Brannon Spector were healthy, then this team was going to score a lot of points.
Unless there is something he isn’t telling us, that statement just isn’t true. Williams had seven catches for 56 yards. Collins had five catches for 50 yards. Neither amount is bad, and if they had three or four more receivers bring in similar numbers – spreading the ball around the way we heard they would – this offense would have looked more like what fans were expecting. That didn’t happen and doesn’t seem likely to happen.
If the Tigers can’t count on that many pass catchers to have similar games, then they need one or two to elevate their games to become elite and carry the offense. As much as we might hope Williams or Collins can elevate to that level, it just doesn’t seem likely either.
I’m optimistic about Tyler Brown, but he is just a true freshman, and at best he will likely be on a similar curve to Williams in 2022 with regards to how quickly he can assert himself and how quickly the staff will trust him.
As a group, the receivers haven’t progressed. If anything, as a group, they have regressed from where they were in last season’s ACC championship game.
Clemson Football is still under construction
The reality is that most units that have a change in coordinator that results in a new system, for either an offense or a defense, will rarely start out in Game One playing their best football. Most of the time, those units need a little time before they become the best version of themselves.
In 2011, Chad Morris’s offense was booed off the field at halftime in their second game of the season against Wofford. In their third game, they upset defending champion Auburn and ended their winning streak. They then beat Florida State and Virginia Tech (both ranked at the time) on their way to winning the Atlantic Division and ACC title.
It was a slower crescendo for Brent Venables. It took nearly three years to transform the defense into the machine it became. In his first year, Clemson only held opponents under 20 points four times in thirteen tries. In his second season, it was only six times in thirteen tries.
I am a classic example of somebody who knew better than to get carried away with my expectations for the offense, yet still ended up buying into the narrative we were hearing from the staff and team that this offense would be fast and violent, and they were going after a national championship.
I don’t begrudge Coach Swinney for using whatever motivational tactics he judges to be the best for his team, but what we learned Monday night is that this team is a work in progress, and works in progress don’t win national championships.
We shouldn’t judge this team – coaches or players – off one game. They need the season to show us what they will eventually be capable of. Expectations need to be reset.