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YOUR BALANCE
Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national
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Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 29, 2018, 12:12 PM

championship.

First of all, let me say that Kelly Bryant performed much better than anyone thought he would and led the team to a 12-1 record (he is not responsible for the Syracuse loss), ACC Championship, and #1 national seed. I understand that and greatly appreciate how good Bryant was. He even opened the ACC Championship by going 14 of 14 in the first 14 passes and also rushing for two touchdowns at that point. So this is not a knock on Bryant.

But we must do better on offense to win the national title for the following reasons.

1.We had the following ranking in national offensive states in 2017:
scoring #32
Rushing #35
Passing #61
Total offense #38

We were nowhere near the top-25 in any category and #61 in passing is really unacceptable considering we are considered wide receiver u.

By comparison, here are Wake Forest's offensive rankings. They play in the same division:
scoring #21
rushing #37
passing #28
total offense #17

Now ask yourself, does Wake Forest have better personnel on offense than we do?


With our defensive stats, an offense with just a top-40 passing attack rather than #61 would probably win the national title. An improved passing attack would also create more rushing yards because the defense would be stretched.

Here are our defensive stats
Scoring #2
Rushing #12
Passing #4
Total Defense #4
Long Live Brent Venables!
With our defense, a little bit better offense means the difference in a national title or not. With most teams, like Wake, a better offense is negated by an average defense.
Wake's defensive stats:
Scoring #76
Rushing #88
Passing #118
Total Defense #112


Our defense is amazing. In the Sugar Bowl, they had us in a 10-6 game and we had the ball in mid- third quarter. And that was with no help whatsoever from our offense in field position, or time of possession rest.

There is no way we should have the talent we have on offense and rank #38 in total offense and #61 in passing offense. The passing game must be improved and the rushing game too for that matter.

I do realize in many games we were taking our foot off the gas, but that would not skew the numbers to this extent.

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The Wake comparison is compelling


May 29, 2018, 12:15 PM

... and a little shocking if I'm being honest .

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DB23


really puts things in perspective, especially the rushing


May 29, 2018, 5:22 PM

that all the excuse makers seem to cling to as a plus

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Advanced stats agree as well


May 29, 2018, 12:22 PM

Offensive S&P+ rankings for ACC teams:

Louisville #5
NC State #21
Wake Forest #22
Miami #36
Clemson #45

Perhaps more offensive than the Wake comparison (who at least had a really good QB last year) is LSU 3 spots above us at #42.

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Re: Advanced stats agree as well


May 30, 2018, 6:56 AM

Yea LSU is offensive. They’re not allowed to have an offense

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Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 29, 2018, 12:46 PM

Just curious, but where did Alabama rank in those same offensive categories?

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15th Scoring, 13th Rushing, 91st Passing, 29th Total.***


May 29, 2018, 12:52 PM



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I hate reality.


May 29, 2018, 12:50 PM

I hate that you're correct, our offense must do its part. We weren't there last year still our record was among the top teams. I'm satisfied with that but I'm more satisfied knowing that our coaches, player and staff are not.

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Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 29, 2018, 2:03 PM

Our offense last year was limited because of qb play. No other way around it. If we switch qbs with wake, we would have a top 20 offense. And even with Wolford (Wofford? I can’t remember) as our qb, it would still have taken an almost perfect performance to beat bama.

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Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 29, 2018, 2:41 PM

Etienne really carried our offense last season. If he didn't make some of his crazy runs it would have been a lot worse.

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Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 29, 2018, 2:21 PM

Exactly and spot on.
more Than likely it’s going to be us vs Bama once again.
We can cruise through the regular season just on talent.
But a predictable O will never beat Nick and the boys.
Whoever our QB is when we do face Bama, will have to move the pocket and throw catchable balls.
He will also have to make fast decisions, take off running if the D is giving it.

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Makes Any Defense of KB Very Hard


May 29, 2018, 2:32 PM

.

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especially the rushing***


May 29, 2018, 5:23 PM



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Very good post. Thanks. I agree wholeheartedly.***


May 29, 2018, 7:11 PM



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Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 29, 2018, 7:50 PM

From my armchair coach analysis, these are things we need to improve:

1) We need to get more physical up front with our run blocking. We have big guys up front but they seem to play soft at times. Who knows what it will take to fix it. That job falls on Robby Caldwell.
2) We also need to get more physical at WR. Cain did not fill M Williams role in that capacity last year. We have a lot of big, tall Wr's but they don't seem to play physical. Hopefully Tee Higgins can be the guy to do it this year.
3) We have to get more production from the TE position. I'm not sure what the stats were, but it seemed like we only targeted our TE once or twice per game. We're deep at the position. We need to use them more in the passing game to take pressure of our Wr's.
4) More dynamic play from our QB. I'm not a K Bryant basher and think he played quite well most of the season as a game manager. His biggest fault seemed to be that he didn't keep his eyes down field once he took off to run. Our offense devolved into a predictable wildcat type offense. I think we'll see a heavy rotation between Bryant and Lawrence this year to keep defenses off balance and hopefully open things up in our passing game.

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Excellent points! Agree completely about


May 30, 2018, 10:50 PM

the offensive line. Also the physical receivers, no Mike Williams, Sammy Watkins, Martavis Bryant, physicality although Cain and McCloud were very good receivers. Yes, wee need to get back to a Jordan Legget, Dwayne Allen, play calls. And absolutely, we have to be careful not to evolve so slowly into a different type of offense that we don't realize it until its too late.

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While I agree, offense has to improve


May 29, 2018, 8:27 PM

I think our Defense controlling games against lesser opponents contributed some to the poor numbers. 1) you don’t have to take offensive risks, play conservative. 2) backups come into games more often. That being said, we have to get better throwing the ball

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It obvious you are a knowledgeable Clemson fan


May 29, 2018, 8:35 PM

So I'm sure you realize we had to replace most of our starters at skill positions last season and STILL MADE THE PLAYOFFS! Geezz Louise ...

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I could not be more pleased with the performance of the 2017


May 30, 2018, 10:59 PM

Clemson Tigers. They exceeded my wildest expectations. I am very proud of that team, which finished #4 in the nation. They will forever go down as one of my favorite Clemson teams of all time, an ACC Champion that finished the regular season and conference title week as the number one team in all the land. My post was not meant to be a knock on them. If anything, they surprised me and made me realize just how close we are to winning another national title. The post is all about the hopes for this year.

Go Tigers!

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Outstanding post. I agree 100%.


May 29, 2018, 8:58 PM

It is inexcusable for an elite program such as ours to not have a QB who can pass the ball well.

It makes me angry for people to justify a run-first QB in this day and age. It would have been fine up until the 1980s, but this is 2018. It’s great if a QB can run, but that should NOT be his primary weapon. Moreover, we have way too much talent on offense to have our QB on multiple QB keepers.

It will be criminal if KB is the starter this season.

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"All those 'Fire Brownell' guys can kiss it." -Joseph Girard III

"Everybody needs to know that Coach Brownell is arguably the best coach to come through Clemson." -PJ Hall


At the risk of piling on Bryant even more I have to ask a question.


May 29, 2018, 9:27 PM

Is he really even a great runner? That's always the first thing you hear about Bryant.. "he doesn't have the arm of Deshaun Watson, but he's an even more dangerous runner" ... etc.

Is he though??

He ran for 3.5 ypc last year which certainly is not elite and trails Watson's career average of 4.4 ypc by a considerable amount. It's light years behind elite running Qbs like Mariota, Lamar Jackson, Vince young, Nick Fitzgerald, manziel, etc who all averaged 6-7+ ypc.

Yeah Bryant gets sacked alot and that hurts his totals, but we are comparing him to other QBs who also got sacked and escapability is generally a strong trait of elite running Qbs. Hell Lamar Jackson got sacked a ton (largely because his OL was trash) and he still averaged 6.3 ypc on his career.

So if Bryant is really a great runner why hasn't he been more efficient on the ground? Is he maybe just not as good of a runner as we expected, does his inability to throw hurt his ability to run via stacked boxes, or was last year just an aberration and it's reasonable to expect him to put up something like 5+ ypc on the ground like you would expect of a truly good running QB?

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No, he's not a better runner, just faster in a straight line


May 29, 2018, 10:51 PM

DW was more elusive, more instinctual, more effective...KB probably is faster in a straight line

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Re: At the risk of piling on Bryant even more I have to ask a question.


May 29, 2018, 11:11 PM [ in reply to At the risk of piling on Bryant even more I have to ask a question. ]

Not a kb basher either but what’s been said and proven above is correct. So is losing the skill positions playing a part. The part losing those skilled players cost us the offense numbers as originally posted but it wasn’t going to win us a championship with them since kb was the qb and he couldn’t get the ball to those skill players.

Coulda woulda shouda and couldn’t be proven one way or the other but if Dabo had gone with HJ from the get and brought kb in some qb run situations and not run him every time we’d kept the defense off balance. I really think we’d have had a better chance at beating bama.

We would also have a defacto starting qb this spring in HJ and HJ would have been battling TL for starting qb... and he wouldn’t have transferred.

CB probably would have transferred but we would have had a legit passing QB with game experience. At this point now, we don’t. That’s imo the real loss of HJ transfer.

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I thought he more explosive in first few games.


May 30, 2018, 10:45 PM [ in reply to At the risk of piling on Bryant even more I have to ask a question. ]

I think he wasn’t 100% healthy.

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Lot's of good analysis. But guess what. Dabo and Streeter


May 30, 2018, 12:04 AM

will have it all figured out. Hang on, Tigers and don't worry.

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Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 30, 2018, 12:12 AM

Tiger OL has to take some blame.....Hyatt's career took a step backward last year.

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The Clemson OL was 3rd in adjusted line yards last year


May 30, 2018, 8:14 AM

which is outstanding (and far, far superior to UGA who was awful in that stat, but made up for it with great RBs that could get yards on their own).

The problem was the adjusted sack rate which was 86th. Compare that to 2016 when our OL had the 4th best adjusted sack rate in the country. Maybe our OL regressed a little bit at pass blocking, but i think the biggest difference was Watson vs Bryant. Watson had incredible pocket presence and rarely took sacks. Bryant had really poor pocket presence last year and got sacked way too much for a run-first QB that's supposed to be elusive.

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Should've linked my source


May 30, 2018, 8:15 AM

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaaol

Also a small apology to the UGA OL. I was looking at 2016 adjusted line yards - they were actually pretty good last year.

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Runningback “blocking” didn’t help either***


May 30, 2018, 10:10 PM [ in reply to The Clemson OL was 3rd in adjusted line yards last year ]



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That's great, but our OL didn't do squat against Alabama.***


May 30, 2018, 10:30 PM [ in reply to The Clemson OL was 3rd in adjusted line yards last year ]



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"All those 'Fire Brownell' guys can kiss it." -Joseph Girard III

"Everybody needs to know that Coach Brownell is arguably the best coach to come through Clemson." -PJ Hall


Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 30, 2018, 4:24 AM

A QB's ability to get the ball anywhere on the field controls the offensive numbers. Run first QB's isn't a good thing with an offense with elite receivers needing the ball in their hands to make elite plays!!!

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Re: Our Offense must do better if we are to compete for national


May 30, 2018, 10:22 AM

^^^^ This pretty much puts a bow on it. Well stated. ^^^^

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Good post with some interesting facts I wasn't aware of


May 30, 2018, 10:27 AM

Wake Forest had a higher ranked offense than us last year? Wow! I know our D carried the team through several games, but wow.

I hope that gets resolved this year. I would love to see the staff take some risks on offense (i.e. air it out more...whatever that looks like...maybe a heavy dose of TL mixed in if he doesn't start?) since the D will be able to carry the team through most games if the offense has any issues.

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Spot on about all that KB has achieved


May 30, 2018, 9:44 PM

The Spring Game told me what I wanted to know, seems like it did the same to Hunter Johnson. If you had an offense to match this defense, teams would cry!

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