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YOUR BALANCE
Just a little bit of perspective this morning...(long)
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Just a little bit of perspective this morning...(long)


Dec 2, 2018, 10:59 AM

Apologies in advance for the length of this post, but I wanted to point out just how incredible the 2018 season has been so far. If the post is too long for you then you have the option to choose not to read it.


I continue to be amazed at how far our program has come in the 10+ years since TDP decided to promote a little known WR coach to interim status and then promoted him to full time HC only a couple months later. Let's just take a moment that we just won our fourth straight ACC Championship in route to our fourth straight playoff berth.


With all of our recent success it's very easy to forget the days of the not so distant past under Tommy West when just managing to become bowl eligible almost seemed like a successful season. Despite the disdain many have for Tommy Bowden, he was a step in the right direction, but even in that era a 9 win season was a big deal. There was nothing more frustrating than our inexplicable streak of only managing to be a fringe ranked team in odd numbered years and then astonishingly mediocre in even numbered years.


It's easy to forget that it's only been a decade since we finally rose back up to the levels of the Danny Ford days and then went on to surpass that level of success. We should not forget the two decades we spent mired in mediocrity. It only makes our current run all the more satisfying.


For years now there has been a bit of a dichotomy between those sometimes referred to as pumpers versus dumpers (perhaps second only to the true fan alums vs the fake fan non-alums). I think it's important for people to remain as objective as possible even though it is admittedly difficult given how emotionally invested we all are in the program (sans JRock and his ilk). It's perfectly reasonable to be discouraged when we don't perform at our best like the way our defense did against the enemy last week. But let's not forget to keep things in perspective.


We are winning our games by a margin of 31.7 points per game. Take a second to consider that. I'm not aware of anywhere historic point margins are listed, but that is on a historic level. For this particular season it is 2nd nationally to only Bama's 33.1 average margin of victory. It's not quite FSU's record margin of 39.5 ppg in 2013, but I would be shocked if it's not in the top 5 of the past 20 years.


Sure our schedule this year has been a tad weaker than recent years, but that shouldn't take away from the fact that we are beating teams by more than 4 TD's. Teams every year have much easier schedules than ours this year but aren't able to beat teams by such a staggering margin. This fact is made even more impressive by the fact that we lead all FBS teams in player participation rate. What other team comes anywhere close to playing an average of 65-70 players per game like we do?


Let's not forget that these players are young men just out of high school. It's virtually impossible for a team to continue to win week in and week out. It's even more difficult for a particular unit to avoid having a bad game from time to time. Last week it was our defense that had a bad game, and last night it was the offense that couldn't seem to get in a rhythm for much of the night. I would argue that was due to the weather more than anything, but when your offense scores 42 points in the rain on a soggy field on a night where we had trouble sustaining drives much of the night, I find that to be particularly impressive.


Even with our bad defensive performance against the enemy, just take a quick look at our defensive stats. We closed out the regular season 2nd nationally in scoring defense allowing only 13.7 ppg. As of right now that's a full 3 points per game better than our #1 ranked 2014 defense.


In terms of total defense (yards per game allowed), we are now 4th nationally allowing 276.8 ypg. That is darn impressive even after last week's defensive debacle. More impressively, we are actually ranked 1st nationally in yards per play allowed at 4.08. I personally find that to be a more informative stat given the different styles of offense played by different teams across the FBS.


Our rush defense is 3rd nationally at 93 ypg allowed. Not bad by any means, but based on yards per rush allowed, we are once again 1st nationally allowing only 2.40 ypc. We are also 6th nationally in rushing TD's allowed with only 8 all year.


Our pass defense is somehow still 18th nationally (183.8 ypg) even after giving up 500+ yards a week ago. We are 7th in TD passes allowed with 11 given up all year even if Jake from FlopFarm did somehow manage 5 in one game.


We are also 2nd nationally with 45 sacks (1st in P5), 2nd in TFL with 121.0 (Venables defense always finishes close to 1st in this stat), 3rd in opponent's first downs, 6th in 3rd down defense and 6th in red zone TD percentage.


Even with all of that success we still had people on here complaining last night about Venables and our defense in a game where we only gave up 200 total yards and 10 points.


Those defensive numbers put us on pace to have one of our best defenses in recent history. It's very difficult to compare the elite defenses of say 1981 or 1990 to today's defense given how much offenses have evolved, but among their recent peers I would say this is our best defense since then. One bad game doesn't last week doesn't take away from the incredible performance over the course of the season. Even Bama's mighty 2016 defense (statistically one of the best in modern history) gave up over 30 points three times that year. Every teams has bad days.


In terms of offense, the 2018 offense is far and away the most productive we have ever had at Clemson. We are 5th nationally this year scoring 45.4 ppg which is the highest ranking we have ever had nationally. It's also the highest scoring offense overall we've ever had outpacing our previous record of 41.0 ppg in 2012 by more than 4 points per game. These numbers are actually skewed down by the early season offense that lacked continuity given the two QB platoon system. It's also with a true freshman QB and tons of other freshman and sophomores littered across the roster.


In total offense we are 5th nationally with 529.8 yards per game. This is also a Clemson record surpassing our previous record set in 2015 with 514.5 yards per game.


All of these aforementioned accomplishments have occurred with a team that leads the nation in player participation.


Even our offensive line has been getting flack on here despite the fact that we are 11th in sacks per game allowed and 2nd in TFL/game allowed. We have now allowed only 2 sacks in 6 games. We have been statistically the best OL in the nation ever since Cervenka moved into the starting role at RG. Couple that with the productivity of our running game and this looks like our best OL in decades.



We all want our offense to score on every drive and for our defense to force 3 and outs every series. Those are laudable goals, but they just aren't possible. We are in the midst of a season with our best offense in history and one of the top defenses in our history.


Let's not forget what we would have given just a few years ago to be in this position. I don't think any of us if we're being honest would have believed that Dabo would have made us one of the two premier programs in the country right now if you asked us 10 years ago when he was hired. I don't know that many of us would have predicted that we would ever be the most consistent program in the country outside of Saban's Bama.


Take a moment to look around and smell the roses to coin a phrase. These are the golden days of Clemson football, and we have reached a level not only unprecedented in our history, but only matched by a very select few teams in the sports over the past several decades. There's nothing wrong with wanting perfection on every play, but don't forget to truly appreciate the rare air that this team is in.

Thanks for reading if you managed to make it through all of that and Go Tigers!!

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Good read, and I agree totally.***


Dec 2, 2018, 11:08 AM



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Re: Just a little bit of perspective this morning...(long)


Dec 2, 2018, 11:15 AM

Excellent read!! We are blessed!!

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Re: Just a little bit of perspective this morning...(long)


Dec 2, 2018, 11:39 AM

Agreed. I always joke that years of Tommy West (and even some Tommy Bowden inexplicable meltdowns) have given me "Clemson PTSD." I'm worried about EVERY game, even the ones that should be blowouts.... It's just hard to shake that feeling of "this is the game where we stumble"... after so many seasons of watching semi-promising Clemson teams collapse.

But the last five years, and especially this season, have brought me around. I still get nervous, but in the back of my mind, I now think, "We're the better team. We've got better players, better execution, and Dabo has them focused." And that's how it plays out on the field. "Close" first halves against Duke, or BC, or SCar... turn into 20-point wins. A "close"quarter with FSU turns into an epic beatdown for the Noles. That's Clemson football, and that's Dabo's mentality transforming the program.

Will we win every single game? Not always. Will we beat Alabama? That's always tough. But for the last four years, we've been as good (or better) as ANY college football team in the country on a given Saturday, and as other talented teams have risen and fallen, we've stayed focused and put ourselves in the position to win it all. AGAIN.

GO TIGERS!

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