More pain, more questions for Clemson football after loss at NC State

Clemson's defense has made plays, but it has been put in a bad spot several times this season.

by Ryan Kantor - Contributor - Mon Oct 30 07:00:06 GMT-04:00 2023

It feels like the same story every Saturday, doesn’t it? Clemson’s defense plays its heart out, Clemson’s offense struggles, and they find themselves in a stalemate. Then Clemson’s offense makes a critical mistake that decides the game. This time it was the offensive line allowing a tipped pass that turned into an interception returned for a touchdown. That, combined with a missed field goal and some overly conservative end-of-game decisions, doomed the Tigers at NC State.

The defense was great aside from three or four plays, but the Tigers offense played poorly and gave them no room for error. The major exception on offense was Phil Mafah. Despite many pleading for him to see more carries – including our own David Hood on the TigerNet Podcast – it took an unfortunate injury to Will Shipley for Mafah to finally get leaned on. He seized the opportunity with 84 yards on 16 carries (5.3 YPC) despite a struggling offensive line. He scored Clemson’s only two touchdowns. It was unfortunate he didn’t receive more trust at the end of the game, as the Tigers elected to pass from the two-yard line and then settle for a field goal instead of giving him two potential cracks at the end zone.

Jake Briningstool also put together an exceptional game for the second week in a row. He totaled 93 receiving yards, giving him 219 yards in his past two games after just 125 in the first six games of the year.

Beyond those two, the offense struggled. Beaux Collins made several great catches, but also took a costly holding penalty and had a crucial third down drop. He ended with just 40 receiving yards, which was actually the most among wide receivers. The offensive line didn’t do a great job creating running lanes, hence Klubnik’s 50 pass attempts. Klubnik was sacked several times, including one that resulted in a fumble (which Mafah recovered) and another on the final drive. Klubnik didn’t help himself much, either. He was inaccurate through much of the first half, and while he began making plays in the second half, he never made the big, game-changing pass or run.

In the end, Clemson lost despite allowing just 202 total yards to NC State. Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has called Clemson’s weird way of losing these games “bizarre,” and while it is uncommon, it is not totally out of nowhere.

From 2015 through 2019, Clemson went 6-3 in the four-team College Football Playoff. Since then, they lost their lone reappearance in 2020. It seems the decline happened slowly then all at once. They went from the greatest team in school history (2018) to a National Championship game appearance (2019) to a semi-final appearance (2020), to back-to-back seasons of not making the playoff but posting double-digit wins (2021, 2022). This year, the bottom has fallen out.

How did we get here? I’ve written about the transfer portal ad nauseam and won’t rehash that missed opportunity again, except to say the potential roster weaknesses many hoped to see addressed have been even more problematic than expected. This is a talented roster though, so blaming the Tigers’ downfall entirely on the portal or NIL is missing a big part of the picture.

Player development is paramount. Swinney has called Clemson a “developmental” program. We routinely see Clemson’s defensive players grow and become better, especially at cornerback, where Mike Reed stands out as a truly elite position coach, but what about on offense?

On the offensive line, Clemson returned four starters. Using PFF grades as a measuring stick, we see that Marcus Tate scores slightly higher than last year, while Will Putnam scores slightly lower and Blake Miller moderately lower. The other returning starter, Walker Parks, got hurt. At wide receiver, Beaux Collins’ 64.1 grade is slightly above last year's but still below his freshman campaign’s grade. Adam Randall’s 57.3 grade remains right in line with his 57.5 from last season. Aside from the injured Antonio Williams, Clemson’s best wide receiver has been true freshman Tyler Brown. At running back, Will Shipley’s PFF grade has dropped drastically from 78.5 to 69.1. Phil Mafah’s remains strong at 77.4, but even he remains a hair below last season. To use coachspeak, it doesn’t seem that players are “making the jump” or “having the game slow down” for them. How do we make sense of this?

One much-discussed theory points to Swinney’s hires of less experienced assistant coaches. Since Clemson’s last National Championship, Swinney has promoted three of his former players to on-field coaching roles. Combined, they have just two years of coaching experience at schools other than Clemson and just ten combined years in graduate assistant, graduate intern, or analyst roles at Clemson. This isn’t to say they’re all bad coaches. Rather it is to highlight how – for a time – Swinney largely shifted his process away from going out and making bold, audacious hires like the ones that brought Chad Morris, Brent Venables, and Mike Reed to Clemson. In fact, only three of Clemson’s ten position coaches/coordinators were hired directly from another school (although OL Coach Thomas Austin was at Georgia State for two years between his stints as GA/analyst at Clemson.)

Perhaps last year’s hire of Garrett Riley, the reigning Broyles Award winner for best coordinator, is an indication that Coach Swinney has seen what’s not working.

Unfortunately, not much can be done mid-season. Notre Dame is up next and looks awfully daunting following their back-to-back blowout wins over USC and Pittsburgh. The spread is only 3.5 points in their favor, but their physical style points to a particularly bad matchup for this rendition of the Clemson Tigers.

Swinney hit the nail on the head when he summed up what we’re all collectively seeing with this program:

“This is really painful. This is a really hurt football team and staff.” – Swinney

It may be a tough couple of weeks to close the season, but the hope is that Clemson can at least beat the putrid 2-6 Gamecocks, find another win to earn a bowl berth, and hopefully keep their strong 2024 and 2025 recruiting classes intact. Then, Swinney can begin the work to get this program back to what he built before and what the Clemson community deserves.