Re: Wait and see on Goodwin

quozzel

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Sep 24, 2022, 5:45 PM

Strange as it may seem, I agree with T3.

Winning is hard and Clemson had a laundry list of problems and coaching staff losses to overcome last year. You do not replace a couple of long-time coordinators who you have won multiple national titles with who have gone on to be head coaches at major programs themselves - I mean, Venables has Oklahoma looking like a playoff squad already - and suffer no dropoff. Still, most areas are notably improved.

Also, you gotta look at circumstances. Where there's a fire, are there injuries? And hey, you look and there's multiple injuries all over our secondary...I mean, our safety room looked like a MASH unit before the season ever started. And there were what, three freshmen out there today? You put them up against a guy like Sam Hartmann - who is 10th all-time in ACC history and had the 6th best season ever in ACC history last year - up against a pack of bright-eyed newbs and they're going to get torched. No surprise there. Hartmann can flat-out play.

In football you play with what you got, and we had 18-and-19-year old kids out there in our secondary today playing against guys headed to the NFL. There's going to be a learning curve and they were up against an all-time-good ACC QB today who could finish his career as the #2 ACC QB all-time behind only Phillip Rivers. It's in reach for Hartmann. He could well pass both Trevor and Deshaun next week.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/conferences/acc/leaders/pass-yds-player-career.html

Atlantic Coast Conference Career Leaders and Records for Passing Yards | College Football at Sports-Reference.com

Atlantic Coast Conference Career Leaders and Records for Passing Yards

Yeah, the kids got skunked. It happens when mismatches happen and they were outmatched today.

In the meantime, our offense is looking better every week. We rolled up 589 yards on O today and it's still not quite firing on all cylinders. Yeah, we need to do better on D. But folks...circumstances.

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I'm haven't given up on Goodwin, but needs to own this game. The first thing out of his mouth should have been a thank you to the offense for baling his butt out. As I recall we still had a pretty good defense last year despite injuries. We played a 3 man front most of the time 2 years ago, because of being thin up front. His job is to adjust to the players he has and the offense that he is playing.

The one thing that I would like to know about today is how much 2 gap technique was the d-line playing today. You aren't going to get a big push if you have to be ready to go either way. I am not sure that the d-line isn't getting some unfair criticism for the game that they played. Doesn't clear up any questions with the coaching, but it might explain why we didn't get more pressure on Hartman.

A lot of people are having knee jerk reactions to the game today, but we should admit that we should have played much better defensively against Wake. You could argue the point for Furman and La Tech as well. We can beat Wake with this defensive performance, but if we have any hope of a championship we have to improve.

Wait and see on Goodwin

Also had 3 starters in the secondary out***