Clemson had an almost perfect Week 1 IMHO

Sep 14, 2020, 12:54 PM

I know there's some people on here salty because Clemson didn't cover...well, a lot of us have warned people for years: do not bet on Clemson to cover in September, and usually not in early October. They're too busy emptying the bench in the third quarter and blooding true freshmen to be worried about point spreads...and the youngsters duly do their deer-in-the-headlights thing and the opponent hangs around instead of dying ugly while Clemson lays the old "half a hundred" on them.

We all know how that goes, though: by October the kids are playing better and by November they've got a real head of steam going, and when the division championship and playoffs roll around Clemson's running 2-3 deep across the board, the starters are a lot less banged up because they've only played 60% of the snaps a normal starter elsewhere does, and our opponents are beat up and running on fumes. And blowouts happen. Poor UVA was actually a pretty good squad last year - they gave Florida all they wanted in the Orange Bowl - but we blew them off the field by 45 in the ACC title game without much noticing they were there, in what was mostly a demonstration of attrition.

Clemson put on an absolute clinic the first half against Wake, rolled up a 27-0 lead and showed the absolute arsenal...future opponents were almost certainly wincing, hard. Last year Clemson couldn't work the middle of the field and people were getting away with that single-high safety look everybody's going to against the hurry-up spread; against Wake our slots and TE's - especially Braden Galloway but also Davis Allen and surprisingly, JC Chalk - really made the Deacs pay for that. Galloway and Amari seem likely to have a monster year because the alternative for a DC is letting Etienne run wild; I had wondered aloud prior to the season if Amari would look more comfortable in the slot this year and indeed he did. Noticeably.

And then the newbs and backups got in, and did what newbs and backups tend to do early on in seasons, which is look more than a little tentative and pensive and not really show much. (Though there were some exceptions. Like: Myles Murphy. And Brian Bresee. And Walker Parks. Like, wow, did Clemson hit on those three, bigly...Murphy and Bresee were in on three sacks between them and did you notice that Parks quietly replaced Jackson Carman midway through the third? I'll bet you didn't. Which is saying something...Carman looks like a Top-15 pick to me, absolutely erased near-unanimous All-ACC first teamer Boogie Basham aside from one oddball play where Trevor held the ball way too long in the first series.)

But while plenty of clunk happened as the bench emptied, we've all seen that talented newbs start looking like confident vets by the end of the season if you rep them enough...and Dabo always reps them enough. Clemson was actually outscored 13-10 in the second half, and was almost certainly outgained...big deal. Clemson still won by 24, kept the miles off the starters, and played 78 of 80 guys, most of them for meaningful snaps. Everybody always talks about Nick Saban's "Process" but Dabo's "Process" is almost an assembly-line for player development.

Pretty much a near-perfect first game, blighted only by the potential injury to Tyler Davis. And as always this is why even pretty good math-based metrics tend to whiff wildly on Clemson; so much of what Clemson accomplished simply won't reflect in S&P+ or ESPN's Power Index...but it'll certainly show up when it matters: in November and December, when the games really start to matter.

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My sense was the difference is Trevor. You can kind of see it when guys get that Zen Master vibe going, they just look almost serene out there. The announcers saw it; they commented Trevor looked like he was playing in a jamboree or 7v7 game, was just playing pitch and catch.

He's on a different planet right now, clearly the best player in college football. He may or may not win the Heisman because let's face it, who knows how that works, but he's certainly the #1 pick in the draft. He just casually went 22 of 28 for 351 and a TD (and had another one dropped!), added another two with his feet, and I think they said he hit 13 different receivers. That level of command...I don't know what anybody does with him. His poise is similar to what we saw out of Joe Burrow last year but his arm is better.

We forget because he was so good as a true frosh, but he really was just a true sophomore last year.

Clemson had an almost perfect Week 1 IMHO

Re: Clemson had an almost perfect Week 1 IMHO

I remember a question I had for you last year about the offense

Re: I remember a question I had for you last year about the offense

Re: I remember a question I had for you last year about the offense

Re: I remember a question I had for you last year about the offense

Totally agree. He was commanding the field like a 5 star general Saturday night***

Re: Clemson had an almost perfect Week 1 IMHO

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