Wake Forest Recap

All in all, the game Clemson fans have been wanting for the past year and a half. The USuCk game from last year made for a great story, but even though the score was fairly lopsided, we didn't dominate the way we did today.

Let me just say, I don't think I've ever been glad to have been so wrong. This was probably the main thing I was wrong about from the preview:

Wake Forest is a well-coached team: they know their fundamentals. Which means we probably can't rely on CJ Spiller or Jacoby Ford to make space for themselves.

CJ Spiller made space for himself quite a few times, making the Wake LB corps look pretty silly. On a few occasions, Spiller even got some help from his teammates. It wasn't the cleanest-looking help I've ever seen, but given what we've had so far this season I'll take it.

Defense
Story of the game. The D-line was sensational, they were ready for every play and every look Wake threw at them. The pressure at the line was so good the secondary was rarely tested. When Wake finally reverted to max protect and Skinner finally had some time later in the third quarter, the secondary played as well as I've seen them all year (granting that it is easier to cover when the opposing team is running max protect). Without any open targets, Skinner still ended up getting hurried.

Some random thoughts:

• If it takes two weeks of practice to look this sharp, let's just treat the Coastal game as a scrimmage and concentrate on FSU.
• Bowers and Sapp are forming the tandem we hoped they'd form last year.
• Goodman and Bowers is starting to sound really nice for next year.
• Skinner didn't run much, but Clemson was shading him in the first half which was good to see. Of course, its hard to believe he burned Maye a couple of times (particularly on that first down run (!)) but there was the adjustment we were waiting for.
• I can't tell you how refreshing the change in defensive philosophy has been. When the team gets a lead, there's recognition by Steele that Wake is going to have to pass so he pins back the ears of the Defense and we get just as much pressure, if not more. Koenning's pseudo-prevent is a thing of the past.
• WF looked like it had a smallish O-line, but still, the D-line has got to be licking its chops after UCF managed 6 sacks against Jacoby Harris on Saturday.

Offense
Not quite as high as I'm sure others are going to be, but let's start with the good: playcalling made more sense. Things were kept relatively simple and I saw less in-drive personnel changes. There were some strange sequences towards the end of the game when they should have been grinding things out, but I give the coaching staff the benefit of the doubt here--they may have been trying out a few things with a some of the second-string players to see how they would respond. You can do that kind of thing with a 5 TD lead.

• Loved the QB draw call. Now maybe a draw later in the game to see what Spiller can do?
• Ellington looked great on his run. No one is going to replace Spiller, and yes, he can't put it on the ground but we should still have above-average production next year from the RB position.
• Good to see Parker running again. I'm not sure why he was so hesitant to scramble against Maryland (he was shaded pretty well by TCU if I recall correctly, so I don't hold that against him) but hopefully its over now.
• Korn, Korn, Korn. If he looks at the bright side, if Parker stupidly sacrifices himself on the goal line again he might have more playing time in the future. (Disclaimer: I loved that play when it happened, but not so much in retrospect. Yes, I know Swinney wanted him to be more aggressive. Its still stupid to intentionally put your QB in harm's way. Particularly when there appears to be a drop-off between your starter and second-stringer...)
• Still waiting to see if Parker can learn to scan through the first couple of targets before delivering a ball. I would say it would make a world of difference for our offense but then that would assume that we aren't dropping passes, so I won't say it.
• Speaking of dropping passes, didn't see much of it, yeah? Maybe its easier to catch when you have the big lead.

Special Teams
Story of the game #2: the WF kicking strategy bordered on insane. As we saw in the Maryland game, if you can find a punter who can consistently boot it 50+ with hang time while pinning the ball on the sidelines, then you can neutralize our advantage. Lucky for us, these types don't grow on trees. Maybe Grobe thought he still had Sam Swank? At any rate, I haven't crunched the numbers but to mitigate (well, effectively eliminate) the possibility of a big special teams play Wake Forest was willing to concede an average of what, 25-30 yards of field position? When you're playing a team that has struggled to move the ball with any consistency, it might be wise to come up with a better strategy next time instead of consistently giving them a much shorter field.

• Note to Andre' Powell: please get someone to sit just inside the goal line during kicks inside the twenty. I can understand being conservative about this in a tight game, but it's just one guy and most of the time the other team is either fair-catching or hoping for the touchback. Not a big deal, but its cost us 20 yards a couple of times in the last two weeks.

Wake Forest Preview

Wake Forest vs. Clemson, Oct. 17, 12:00pm, Death Valley

Tigermax:

I don't see this as a make-or-break "playoff" game or whatever. Unless you're talking about making-or-breaking your chances for a bowl birth; I'll buy that one. We've got to win an evenly-matched game somewhere along the line if it's gonna happen.

At any rate, after the miserable loss 2 weeks ago at the hands of Maryland and the intervening bye week with kind of sorta some drama, on paper things actually shape up pretty nicely for Billy Napier & Co. Wake Forest has struggled a bit on defense this year and the extra week has given Clemson lots of time to prep for Jim Grobe's team and work on execution. I'm hoping for some points on scripted drives in the first quarter; then I'll be looking for smoother playcalling and elimination of the personnel confusion that has cropped up now and then this year. I'll also be watching to see what they've done with Parker over the last two weeks. Hopefully we see him tucking the ball and running on occasion to keep the WF defense honest.

On the flip side, Wake Forest is a well-coached team: they know their fundamentals. Which means we probably can't rely on CJ Spiller or Jacoby Ford to make space for themselves. They are going to need to the help of, you know, their teammates. Not just 9 other guys out on the field, mind you, but teammates executing well--opening up holes along the offensive line, not telegraphing passes, and the like.

For Wake, Rilo Kiley Riley Skinner is the story (I haven't been able to keep that straight for four years now). Skinner has always been the consummate Grobe game-manager, but as Paul Strelow already pointed out, he's been throwing downfield more often this year. "Evolving," I guess. Should be an interesting test for our secondary, which has looked shaky at times this year. If Skinner is able to open up the field with his improved passing, the defense could be on the field for quite some time. Grobe has called Skinner's number on the ground in the past vs. Clemson, and you can bet we'll see more of it this year after he sees the tapes from our last two games. We'll see if/how Steele adjusts.

All in all, as I said earlier in the week, I gotta think Wake has the edge. I don't expect to see improvement in the offense, but I'm holding out hope that we don't look worse. Our best shot is to put up a couple of early scores and tack on the occasional field goal while our defense holds on for dear life.

Clemben:

I am slightly more optimistic because the game is at Death Valley. Grobe has a 3-5 record against Clemson but all of those wins have come at Wake. Skinner when given time has looked real good this year but he also has had some poor decision making when pressured. I am afraid of him running more than passing to be honest. Mobile QB's have killed us--even when they are the son of the drummer of RATT they run all over us. How many yards could Turner have gotten if he had any athleticism. Boggles the mind...

So it will be close because we cant score, if we lose again without scoring a fourth quarter TD I call the season close to over. Giving Wake the tiebreaker would be hard to overcome and would force us to win out being 1-3 in conference play. 2-2 is a different beast, I really think the winner of the division is going to be 4-4. Lots of football to be played though, lets just hope our brand involves more touchdowns and I-formations with Diehl blocking.

Go Tigers!!

"Buying into the System"

I mentioned last Saturday featured one of the least-prepared broadcasting duos I have ever heard. I know its hard to fill that much air time and if it was me lord knows I'd be spouting off all sorts of non-sensical things within a few minutes. From what I could tell though, they had essentially prepared two anecdotes to discuss on air (which they returned to again and again): 1) Ralph Friedgen's new diet and 2) Dabo Swinney's abilities as a motivator. As little an effort to prepare for a game that this represents, what they mentioned about Swinney is unintentionally revealing about the state of Clemson football.

Essentially the anecdote went something like this: one of the announcers was talking recently to Swinney and he said the most important thing the Clemson staff had tried to emphasize with the players was "getting them to buy into the system." Now, I understand that this is pretty standard fare for a head coach. You don't want to talk specifics because if you say, "we really need to improve on the offensive line", and things don't get better...well, you might as well draft and proofread the blogposts and opinion columns and call-in radio diatribes yourself.

But this kind of talk really irritates me for two reasons. First, this is classic Bowden-esque mediaspeak the Clemson fanbase has come to despise. The comment is designed to insulate yourself from becoming the scapegoat by placing the blame for failure squarely on those lazy and selfish and attention-craving players out on the field (who "just don't play the game the way its supposed to be played"). In the end all Swinney has to say if the season falls apart is that if the players had just embraced his system, the results would have been different.

The second reason is personally more stomach-churning. Why, exactly, should any player on the offense feel compelled to "buy into the system"? What reason has the staff given them? Its become painfully clear that there is no defined offensive system. The fans are just coming to this realization, but the players have been talking to the coaches since Spring. What if they have been just as confused all along as we are now? How can you expect someone to buy into something if they have no idea what it is? If this was Jim Grobe at Wake Forest and we had a track record of a few years of incremental improvement, then yes, you can and should ask players to buy into your system. But this offensive staff is made up of a lot of the same people that were involved in the trainwrecks of the Bowden years. I'm sure the players want to believe, but these are intelligent kids. I'm sure they can see out on the field that Clemson has an overall advantage in athletic ability relative to other teams. Yet despite this, they find themselves in close games against teams they should crush, and end up inexplicably losing games to boot. What conclusions about the coaching would you end up drawing if you were in the same situation?

Swinney is still inexperienced at this head-coaching thing, and worse, his primary mentor is the guy the fanbase drove out of town. Hopefully these kind of comments are unintentional and harmless. Maybe he was only saying this to the team in the pre-season. But if he's still saying it now, this deep into a season of absolute offensive futility, he's risking a complete disconnection with the players. There's no way the players can be expected to buy into this system now, unless Swinney expects them to take it on faith. But this ain't a church, and Swinney ain't a preacher.

My completely unsolicited advice: take responsibility for the situation, and take it quickly. In the future, give honest assessments of what needs to be improved, and admit when the improvement hasn't happened. That's the kind of straight-talking that's appreciated in regions around Clemson, and it's also the kind that's been sorely lacking in the last decade.