The more I think of what happened this year with the offense the more I comeback to Anchrum and Walker Parks being the Linchpin to the offense the past 2 years. With DJ at QB the passing game was dead, but even with loaded boxes the OL was able to pound most opponents into submission. This year we saw teams send 3 or 4 and stuff the Clemson run game until the ND game(why did they get away from the zone blocking scheme again during the SCAR game?). When your OL is getting whipped and can't move a light box it's hard to pass down field vs 8 in coverage. It got even worse once teams realized Clemson would not take shots downfield and started playing with a small cushion and the cheat up after the snap to poach the short routes. Wr screens were immediately blown up bc blocking was awful from the wrs and defenses were primed to crash on short pass plays with no fear of playaction bc they knew the front 4 would get home and blow up the run.
Matt Luke is they engine to next year's offense, it should always be the OL that is the engine. Clemson got spoiled with plug and play generational QBs, no offensive scheme should be 100% reliant on a QB to carry them. That's a luxury not a necessity. 4 of the top 5 are proof of that. Michigan, UGA, Texas, and Bama have decent QBs none of those guys are elite but the schemes they played in and most importantly the OL they played behind were ELITE(except the Bama center lol).