Re: Wow this was eye opening. MUST READ

ColumbiaTiger66

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Oct 8, 2025, 8:32 AM

When Riley first appeared in Clemson and used the chalkboard to define and explain his idea of a spread offense, he showed a bunch of mesh routes that placed several WRs in the QBs field of view at the same time - 2-3 seconds from the snap. The routes were designed to use the middle of the field and get 8-10 yards per catch (more if the receiver broke free) from coverage tackles. The play design nearly always included a receiver over the top in case the safeties could be beat.The type of offense I saw Riley draw up requires quick receivers running good crisp routes and the QB getting the ball out in a hurry.

At the time, I thought the scheme (as designed) was exactly what we needed to produce a high-powered offense that could be used to go fast, get the defense tired, setting up the run game that would take advantage of a weary front 7.

Unfortunately, that's not what we've seen. Instead, we go too slow, miss blocking assignaments (causing the QB to distrust the OL and scramble whether he needs to or not), hold the ball too long (on passing downs), drop passes and fail to find the open receiver.

That's a coaching problem completely - through and through - failure to teach and demand fundamental excellence and consistency.

We have the same problems on defense - coaching for fundamental excellence and consistency.

The proof was shown against a rather bad UNC team after a prior 2-week coaching effort was made to correct problems - something that should have been identified and corrected during spring and fall camp. Instead, I do believe that players AND coaches ate the rat poison that projected us as playoff champions due to the amount of returning talent.

Talent without discipline and cohesion will go off the rails every time and early season comments by Dabo that the team was self-led might have been at the root of the problem. The players certainly can lend support to one another, but they are not qualified to be coaches. It appears to me that the problem was (is still?) coaches not doing what they're paid to do with the energy required to get players trained for their positions.

This comes back to Dabo. I think he may have now figured out the problem and is holding himself and other coaches accountable. This week will provide another look at what progress has been achieved.

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You're mixing time frames and complaints. Dabo built us on into a championship program on the backs of 3 and 4 star players with some of the same coaches and a lot of the "nepo/friends & family" garbage everyone likes to complain about. As the baseline talent (at least as measured by recruiting services) has increased the results on field have dwindled. While I can understand the knee jerk urge to blame coaching (in this context I assume we mean development of the players) but there are a multitude of factors. We're also ignoring previous success and that Dabo has been filling the staff with exactly the kind of "big names" the message board geniuses are looking for.

Before Dabo built Clemson into one of the major brands of college football, he had to dig deep on player evaluations in recruiting. By the midpoint of our playoff run recruiting was on autopilot. Offer the 5 and 4 stars at the position of need for the cycle and go to lunch. This also coincided with covid which hampered high school player development while making real evaluation more difficult. It also clogged this system with players lingering around forever. Clemson is not the only school suffering from this. 3 of the top 5 quarterback from the 2020 signing class were drafted as soon as eligible in 2023. The other 2 were DJU and an injured player. The 2021 class (played all high school ball pre-covid) also had three in the NFL, one still playing, and one quit for personal reasons. None of the top 5 in 2022 were drafted last year. It's not a coincidence.

Wow this was eye opening. MUST READ