Free the Wild Tigers

So this article says wild Tigers could be extinct in 12 years. That makes me sad. As wild Clemson Tigers we should really stop this somehow. Maybe then we could reverse our own loss of wins.

Tigers are cool and should be allowed to roam free. They should perform their natural born instincts to kill animals like coots and bulldogs and eagles. Devour rams with tar on their heels. Eat bird hurricane things?? Oh and other inferior breeds of Tiger. Just trying to distract myself. If I hear anything about a Dabo extension I will officially begin calling for Danny Ford to personally come and exercise the demons. If the Coot curse is cured we will have a 'Block C' Danny Curse on our hands.

Save our brand of Tiger. Fire Terry Don Phillips.

--Random thought: What does Woody McCorvey do that is so special? If he is an administrator that is the highest paid paper pusher ever. If he was supposed to keep Dabo grounded, thats a big fail. If he was supposed to keep Dabo humble and open to critique, we have another big fat fail. When we actually have money to spend--lets spend it in the right places...

South Carolina Post Suckings

Never in our football history have we lost to South Carolina twice in a row. We lost on our home turf on senior night and it wasn't even close. Its time to take a look in the mirror and admit that we are broken. A season of 6-6 against a sucky ACC Atlantic and two easy wins is laughable. Not to mention that if we beat FSU that we would be in the ACC Champs game--you can go 5-3 and win the ACC, it is not that difficult.

USC has outrecruited Clemson the past three seasons because they got Alshon Jeffery, Lattimore and Gilmore. We couldn't cross midfield. My hat is off to Spurrier. He was all but done two years ago after Dabo beat him as the interim HC but has righted the ship and has the talent in place. Garcia has matured as a QB in the way that KP never could. I think he just hadn't invested enough time and energy into it--he was always relying on natural talent. Boyd was ok. Our offense sucks. Did we even throw to Allen all night?? Why the five passes to Ford?I could go on but this is depressing.

Daquan please stick around to right this ship and beat Carolina!!

I Don't Have the Stomach For Patience

So Dabo has called for patience from the fans. This is the same guy who was demanding excellence and was going to change the culture--teach us how to get over the hump and win???

No sir, I will not have any patience. The defense is certainly not the problem. Special Teams is directly related to quality of coaching more than any other facet of the game and has less to do with talent (plus we have more scholarship special teamers than almost any other team in the country). The offense was recruited with Billy Napier as recruiting coordinator and Dabo as the main recruiter. One of the main reasons why Dabo was hired was to maintain the continuity and judging by the recruiting rankings--this was the year!! Please don't try to insult me by saying you don't have the players or the talent.

There is plenty of both, you have just mismanaged it. You aren't rebuilding--you are screwing up what was previously built. If you don't have the talent now that must mean you were a bad position coach beforehand and for some reason I am supposed to reward that with patience. I am supposed to somehow feel pity for you?? And please don't say Bowden or Spence had too iron clad a hand and you couldn't get the recruits you wanted.

We should have easily beaten FSU. I am sick of the Spence stalls in the red zone and being a .500 team. Just think if we hadn't played those two powderpuffs at the beginning of the year...

If Dabo can't get us to the ACC Championship game (notice I said we don't even have to win it, just be there) then he should be gone. If we lose to South Carolina three times in a row then he should be gone. Remember Dabo this is that word 'competition' at the highest level so quit your whining and quacking like a duck. If you can't deliver then get out of the way because Clemson deserves better.

At least we beat Wofford (I am relying on Basketball, thats how bad things have gotten), go Brownell...

Western Carolina Review

Well its Basketball season already. Surprise, surprise I'm actually excited for this season. I want to see if this team will actually learn how to run some offense and pass the ball into the post. I thought the world of Purnell after Shyatt but thought we did less with more last season. I was personally looking for the Sweet 16 last year with the incoming recruits.

So this season I just want to make the tourney and go 8-8 in conference play. Kenpom currently has us at 9-7, which I think is possible for this team, and 28th overall, a little high for now but not entirely removed from the realm of possibility.

For all you stupid pundits Kenpom has the ACC dominating the BIG 10 and BIG 12. Just because sports people (I refuse to use the word journalists) come from the Big 10 doesn't mean they should let their bias show so obviously. Oh and putting the word BIG in front of your conference doesn't make it better--just silly(especially when the numbers don't add up anymore). Can't wait for the Big Ten versus ACC this year. At least in Basketball we have something like this that can shut down pundits for a little while.

Oh yeah so the game...

I keep hearing that Bobo won't/can't contribute. I don't agree and I love that the staff is committed to getting some production from him. Purnell was always clueless with big men--I think Devin Booker regressed last year. Bobo can get opposing teams big men into foul trouble, he can manufacture some points against smaller teams like VTech or Miami, and that is worth the investment. Think of Duke last year and Zoubek.

Jennings looked like he might be able to contribute and Booker looked great, lots of putbacks etc. Brownell looked to be mixing and matching and had his guys ready to play. He passes the initial smell test, unlike Wake Forest and their loss to STETSON!! hahaha.

On the not so positive side we lack depth in the backcourt. With Stitt in bad foul trouble (his play wasn't just bad, it was absent) and Young with an injured thigh bruise, we had to turn to Cory Stanton and even Anderson. That is fine in non-conf but scary for ACC play if Stitt or Young go down with an injury. Stitt seemed to be playing more of the 2 which he didn't seem to particularly care for but with a Brownell's offense it shouldn't matter. Noel Johnson has to be a big part of our offense if we are going to have success this year. He needs to be a consistent 3 pt. threat and really struggled last night. I am also worried about our ability to defend the three with such small guards on the floor.

Tanner Smith 1-6 from the FT line?? Tigers can't afford to shoot below 65% from the line this year. My same criticism of Smith remains--a great glue guy but his junk ball play won't stand up in ACC play, especially without the intentional chaos of Purnell's system. This scares me. Grant seems about the same as last year.

Now this is all after one game so feel free to laugh at these observations. Western Carolina was an above average team last year and Wofford will actual be a test next week. We will know more about the team after Wofford. Good start, hope Brownell and crew can help this offense.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

"After each series they come over and sit us down and tell us, ‘This is how they run the ball out of this set, this is where they’re going to run the ball out of that set. They do some stuff to try to confuse you, but when it came down to it, it was just fundamental -- the stuff we’d harped on all week. They didn’t come out with anything special or anything different. We knew the plays that were coming and we played them well."

Luke Kuechly (BC MLB)

You're predictable. You're out of your depth. It's time for change we can believe in.

I don't think I have ever heard a more stinging critique of an Offense. When you line up the opposing teams defense knows from your very formation the plays you will run. I think when Defensive Coordinators prep for our team they step inside the sandbox and feel like its kids stuff. Napier and Dabo have not progressed as Offensive designers. You have to be able to make the right playcalls in-game but first you need to have an offensive philosophy/identity. I often feel like I am watching a Madden offense and I'm sick of it. We have the talent, certainly enough to be doing better than 4-4, and I don't think we have the offensive coaching chops sans CJ Spiller to compete in an average ACC. I was willing to go through the growing pains but if your not going to grow past 5 foot 8 and you fired a guy for being 5 foot 10 then whats the point in holding out for 6 foot 3?? If you find a miracle cure, and find it fast I am all for it but until then I'm thinking--Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Oh and Dabo--calling out the 5% versus the 95% of fans is childish and stupid when you're 4-4.

Surprised?

Alternate title: Long, slow end of the Swinney era, week 4 update

I'm a little confused about the reaction in the Clemson blogosphere. Sure, I was upset after the loss, but after the normal recovery time I can't say I was shocked. I don't really view this as a debacle, at least not on the order of Maryland 2009 when we were beat soundly by a bad, banged up team with no talent that was going through one of Friedgen's inexplicable phases where he doesn't really seem to care much about coaching. No, this was your standard BC team that doesn't feature an NFL-caliber quarterback: sound, fundamental line play highlighted by a stout front 7 on defense and an O-line that can open up holes for the running game. Yeah, they've struggled this year (rotating in potted plants at QB will do that for ya), but they've also improved as the year went along--particularly on defense.

In hindsight, its not surprising Clemson struggled; we rely on the run game to set up whatever pass yards we can scrounge up and BC's defense excels at stopping the run. I'm not sure why everyone was suddenly so confident in the pass game. Sure, Nuke Hopkins is hustling all over the field and generally showing up the entire WR corps, but he's still dropping passes and struggling to get separation (he's bound for good things in this league, but he's still a freshman). By the way, I'm also guilty of buying the "Kyle Parker is going to break out of his rut any game now" line, by now it's clear that Parker's 2009 success was largely the function of the NFL-caliber talent around him (Ford, Spiller, Palmer). He has potential, no doubt, but expecting him to spurn the MLB to save the season Spiller-style was pretty naive in retrospect.

But what of our superior talent, you ask? Its a good question, by all accounts we certainly have the advantage on paper. Here's my reply: remember how we aren't capable of developing talent? As an aside, on some level it must be a good feeling to be a BC fan; you get to watch your players develop into a team that is better than the sum of its parts. They aren't going to win any national championships anytime soon, but hey, you grow to love each and every team with each and every passing game. Not a bad life for a fan. Not a great life, but hey, better than rooting for a team that perpetually underperforms.

After the Miami game, I wrote that we were entering the long, slow end of the Swinney era. Nothing has happened to change my mind. The GT game was a blip, a game against a decent team that we actually matched up well with (our D-line was strong enough to disrupt the option all game long and our O-line was matched up against a small defensive front). We might even beat NCSU (50-50, I'd say) or FSU (bit of a longshot), since our defense should be able to limit the damage from their offenses and we will be able to run the ball at least on occasion. But even wins in these games aren't going to change the fact our talent doesn't develop and we've been consistently outcoached (or coached ourselves into the ground) this season.

I also stand by my previous assessment that Swinney lives to see next year (with fall-guy Napier getting the axe, of course). I just don't sense the anger on the blogs seeping into the mainstream fan's conscious, at least not yet. The real standard for Swinney's departure should probably be this: a currently modest draft class losing commitments and plummeting in value. The football program will then officially be without a single functioning strength. In that case, you can't give Swinney another year to wreck the program for the next five, it's time to cut your losses and move on.