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Spring Game thoughts
Apr 6, 2019, 7:44 PM
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DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A LONG POST. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. IF READING MELTS YOUR BRAIN CEASE AND DESIST NOW. REALLY.
TL-DR VERSION FOR THE TWITTER CREW: We rule college football with an iron fist right now, though I'm somewhat concerned about TE, OL depth. And oh, yeah, if I wasn't a Clemson fan, I'd freakin' HATE Clemson right now. We're that good.
The obvious takeaway from today: we are stupidly, ridiculously loaded. Again. I see no way Clemson is not the overwhelming favorite to win the National Title...again. We actually look a bit like a team somebody built on Madden, with the salary cap feature turned to "off". I just kind of shake my head right now.
Mind, we'll still probably do what we do early on in seasons, which is play a boatload of young guys, look somewhat clunky and occasionally underwhelming in September, and maybe win some unexpected squeakers with a minimum of style points...all while largely keeping the gameplans vanilla, playing about 75+ guys a game, and getting the newbs dry behind the ears and a functional rotation and pecking order established. You know what happens then: Alabama and probably some other Flavor Of the Moment - you know, UGA, Oklahoma, Ohio State, whoever - will be merrily running up the scores on outmatched opponents, the TV pundits, sportswriters, and talking heads will go all knee-jerk and over-react, and Clemson will drop to #2 and probably #3. Dabo will gleefully start poor-mouthing it and talking about things like the ROY Bus while quietly plotting exactly how he's going to run everyone down with that bus in the postseason. By midseason we'll be looking better...and by November, Clemson will be back curb-stomping opponents and rounding into peak form as our depth and experience starts taking over games and other teams are wearing down and getting a book of film on them.
We know this will happen because we've seen it happen at least 4-5 times over the last five years now, and Clemson's got a boatload of new faces to work in this year. But Oh My do those newbs look good.
Just off the top of my head, my thoughts on offense:
* Ladson and Ngata look pretty much like clones of Higgins and Ross, talentwise. Which is ridiculous. Curious to see who will take that slot position, Powell or TJ Chase...but I actually like Powell's physicality in there and he seems to have a feel for working the underneath coverages. Add in Overton and you've got what looks like a 7-man rotation of guys who will play Sundays, and we've got a fleet of Lamborghini's and Ferrari's at outside WR. Agree with the notion we have at least 4 future first-rounders at WR right now. Which is just silly, not to mention unfair, when you also have probably the future overall #1 pick throwing them balls in TL16.
* Concerned about the TE spot. You can see the talent - and the rawness - of Jaelyn Lay, and it's looking more and more like Braden Galloway may have to sit the year due to that osterine incident...which is a shame, because he's clearly coming on huge, looks absolutely prototype. Still think we do a lot of 10p (4 WR, 1 RB, no TE) sets this year due to that and the fact that the WR corps is so strong, but Tony Elliot also traditionally lives most comfortably in 11p because it activates the run game.
* Our OL is going to be HUGE this year but I'm iffy on the backups. Jackson Carman, John Simpson, and Gage Cervanka are pure brutes but both teams' OL got skunked pretty bad today. Did notice Pollard on roller skates at times at C, mostly courtesy of (cough) early enrollee Tyler Davis, so some concern there. And do we have the depth to roll 8+ like we have been doing the last few years? Hope so.
* Oh, and yeah: WE ARE SO FREAKING SPOILED AT QB. Any other program would be doing cartwheels over Taisun Phommachanh's potential...and we have the luxury of bringing him along slowly because we have Trevor and Chase Brice ahead of him, so he's basically going to be in Witness Protection the next couple years. But Phommachanh looks like he's in the same league, talentwise, as a Deshaun Watson, or very close to it...and that's just gotten to be the New Normal at Clemson. Speaking of Brice, not only can we still win with Brice, honestly, he's so good I suspect Clemson would hardly drop off much if at all with him under center for an extended period. Could he be the third-best (or certainly a Top-5) QB in Clemson history, behind only DW4 and TL16 and maybe Tajh Boyd and Charlie Whitehurst? It's possible. Brice is real good, people, whatever.
Overall, the most talented offense in college football history? Maybe...if the OL develops adequate depth, and we can get something out of the TE spot. You can make a very convincing argument this group is potentially even more talented than that 2004 Southern Cal squad.
Will they play to that level? Well, that's why you line up and play the game....
As for my thoughts on defense...
* It was actually easy to forget a lot of times that Clemson was short its top 5 DT's from last year, the three guys going NFL plus Pinckney and Jordan Williams, because the next guys up filled that admirably. Tyler Davis is a full-grown man and he's an early enrollee. Not sure anybody's going to stop that youngster from grabbing a starting spot; as mentioned above he ate Pollard's lunch pretty comprehensively today. Watch the tape. Davis leaps off it.
* No joke - I think our ends might have actually improved from last year. Dunno if there's anybody quite as imposing as Cle Missile individually but that collection of Xavier Thomas, Justin Foster, KJ Henry, Logan Rudolph, and Justin Mascoll is, IMHO, as a position group collectively better than what we had last year. They're all future NFL and a lot of them are going to go high.
* We have a Viking-longship-sized boatload of very active LB's and safeties...and we also have at least three pure killers at CB right now. This could be the best secondary in Venables' tenure. Go ahead and pencil AJ Terrell as an early enrollee into the NFL; he's the latest first-or-second-round guy there and he's gone after 2019, IMHO. Derion Kendrick got beat once by Ross but brutally clamped down the rest of the time on whoever he was on and he looks like a future top-half-of-the-first-round guy to my eyes; he's got effortless hip turn, incredible natural ball skills, and an attitude you can't knock down with a hammer. You can see why the coaches are so excited about him; Kendrick's a very talented WR; he's got truly rare tools as a CB. Sheridan Jones is a head-turning talent himself; I actually think he looks better, at this point, than either Trayvon Mullen or AJ Terrell did as freshmen...which is even more impressive when you consider Jones isn't actually even officially a freshman yet.
All those new moving pieces may give us some busts early on in the season, but the talent level is, again, ridiculous. I was expecting a drop-off, especially early on in the season, and there may be some busts due to inexperience but this is easily a Top-10 and probably a Top-5 defense again.
Oh, and I also noticed a lot of live legs out there in the kicking game attached to very young guys. Booming punts. Long field goals. Unreturnable kickoffs. A lot of hidden yards for Clemson, in other words.
Like I said...if I didn't love Clemson so much...I would really hate Clemson right now.
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