2024 Season Summary (Long)

Dec 1, 2024, 1:59 PM

Can’t say I’m terribly surprised by the end of the 2024 season. Prior to the season, my prognostication was a slight improvement over last year to a 9-3 regular season with losses to UGA, FSU, and a split between VT and Pitt on the road, culminating in missing the ACC Championship game again. I did not believe there would be a great improvement by the offense, however, the thought was the defense would be elite in spite of the drop-off in coaching. We arrive at 9-3 different than most of us probably thought. I never Imagined FSU would be so bad, or USuC on the verge of the playoff (NEVER saw that coming). Below is a synopsis of how I saw the season play out:

Positives
Cade - Cade Kubnick overperformed and statistically is one of the best QBs in the nation. If he had weapons like Mike Williams or Tee Higgins, this conversation would be about whether or not we would be a 1-seed in the playoff.
Oline coaching - Matt Luke earned his paycheck this year as the Oline was well-coached vs last year and improved as the year progressed. Without the injuries, this would have been a solid group.
Receivers - The receivers did improve and produced, even though I feel the group still lacks a true difference-maker, no offense to A. Williams
Mafah - Phil Mafah gained 1000 yards and made the offense go. Opponents focus on him won a couple games for us.

Negatives
Run defense - What we witnessed this year is an unacceptable run defense by Clemson standards. I cannot remember a time other than a couple Hatfield and Bowden teams where Clemson could not set the edge. This has to be fixed now.
Conservative play calling - Lot of finger-pointing about this one, but the Clemson play book gets extremely vanilla in close games. This is ‘playing not to lose’ bubbling to the surface. The great Clemson teams of 2015-2020 feasted on high-risk, high-reward plays to break games open. Watching Mafah trying to run the A-gap when the opponent is expecting it on 3rd and 3 is hard to watch.
Tackling - Poor tackling and angles plagued the Clemson defense all year. This is where we miss Venables the most. His defenses could absolutely tackle and seemed to always be in position.
Running Back Depth.- Other than a couple of carries by Jay Hanes, where is the running back depth? We only have 1 guy? Spiller needs to find a rotation and not wear out a running back so he can’t play the last ⅓ of the season.

Miserable Failures

Field Goal Kicking - It is unbelievable to me that a major D-1 program cannot execute a field goal. I went to my son’s high school games and watched teams routinely execute and make 40-yard field goals, IN HIGH SCHOOL. The protection and kick angle problem never got fixed and cost us the South Carolina game (due to the fact we left points on the field because of kicking problems). This smacks of complete lack of coaching and effort.

Special teams overall- Clemson’s special teams are almost dead last in NCAA. What is the problem here?. Special teams are ⅓ of the game, and definitely cost us the SC game and possibly the Louisville game. We clearly cannot execute a field goal consistenly. Can we not find a top 50 punter? Maybe open up competition to the student body. Is there no one besides Antonio Williams who can return a kick? Is there not a single trick play the special teams can run? Tommy Bowden was the master of putting flashy offensive players on the field and blowing the game with special teams failures. We are headed there again.

Summary
Overall, you are what your record says you are. We are now consistently a 9-win team in the regular season. Historically, better than average, but a far cry from where the program was 5 years ago. I feel like many other Clemson fans, a 9-win season is fine as long as you beat South Carolina. Combine these glaring coaching issues with losing to Shane Beamer regularly, and you are going to have discontented fans in a hurry.

What does next year look like? Without special teams improvement and staffing changes, not much different. Losing Mafah with no proven back-up, Bringstool will be gone, as well as unexpected departures to the portal. My expectation next year is another 9-3 season with an outside chance at the ACC title game again.

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down

thumb_up

2024 Season Summary (Long)

a lot of players are about to hit the portal

we lose to SMU and the locker room is lost***

Can't say I disagree on anything except I believe

TigerBoard POTD