When the schedule for this season of Clemson football came out in February, I immediately got my Bayer ready. After all it has saved many a lives when it comes to heart attacks. With the toughest start in Clemson history (or at least that I have seen), I can honestly say that I was, in reality, accepting a 0 and 4 start to the year. I am a pessimist at heart, I find that if you look at the world this way you are never disappointed. If you expect to lose the first four games, and you win a couple you are elated. If you lose those four games, you were prepared. So far, the now proclaimed Cardiac Kids of Clemson are living up to the name, keeping every game close to the final minutes. To say that I was elated when we beat Texas A&M and Maryland to start the season off is an understatement. When we lost to Miami in a triple overtime ESPN instant classic, I looked at the glass half full and called it a good loss for lessons learned sake. It was when we lost to Boston College in OT that the pessimism came back. My mistake, you see, was that after the Miami game I truly believed that we had BC pinned before they even entered Death Valley. I believed that Clemson would reach that next level after the Miami game, a multi leveled attack, which would wear down the BC team in the southern heat. What happened instead was Clemson coming ill prepared and not even performing close to what they had done against Miami.

I don’t even know how to start the review of this game so I will break it down into sections.

Environment:

Death Valley is known for being a hostile environment, as it is usually stagnant hot air and a rowdy sea of 80,000 Orange clad fans. From here on out I say Clemson goes the way USuCk goes when a game isn’t picked up by a major station. If it isn’t national coverage you play the game at night. The noon game time, although originally was supposed to wear down the Eagles, ended up hurting Clemson in more ways than one. The time consuming Eagles offense kept the Tiger D on the field over 60% of the game. In direct correlation, the Tiger fans attempted to be the well known audio motivation for that 60%. By the half, the crowd was exhausted and the D was struggling. The crowd was initially sold out but after the half I believe that many people stayed out tailgating to escape the 92 degree heat and stale air. Without the noise, the Eagles didn’t struggle on offense and the Tiger D had nothing to motivate them.

Offense:

In it’s previous three games, Clemson attempted to establish a well balanced run and pass offense. With a respectable crew of wide receivers and two very different options of running styles in the back field, the Tigers had a bag full of options to try on the nationally 3^rd ranked Eagle rush defense. James Davis had limited snaps as his hard nosed, up the middle running was continuously jammed by the line. Reggie Merriweather had a bit more luck with his agility but again was not enough to get respectable yardage. Why the Tigers tried to continuously run against this defense is mind boggling. When watching the FSU/BC game it was evident that the weakness was in the secondary. Clemson never opened this wound……well OK they did once, but I guess no one was looking as the Curtis Baham bomb was the biggest play of the game. The Clemson receiving core has an average height of about 6’ 3” I would say with Aaron Kelly and Kelvin Grant towering at 6’6” I believe. The BC corners are all around 6’2” or less, and the mismatches were very evident even sitting in the stands. Clemson exposed the defensive weakness with a long ball to Curtis Baham and never tried again. With the strength and accuracy of Charlie Whitehurst and the talent and height in the receivers, the Tigers could have opened the running game by forcing BC to spread the D to cover the pass. Instead, the Tigers continued to try to run the ball against the hulking D line and get off short passes on 3^rd and long in attempts to cover the yardage. The icing on the cake came in OT when the Tigers face 3^rd and 3. The previous play was a sweep left which put a man in motion to cover the sweep on 2^nd down. As that was successful, the offense used the exact same play, only in reverse, in attempts to get the first down. I am a fan….in the stands…and the same man goes in motion to the other side for the same stance. If I can pick up the play it’s no wonder Reggie lost yards on the final Tigers down. Spence has got to open the long ball up. Charlie has a great completion percentage, great, but what is it getting us on the field? This game I was yearning for the days of Rod Gardner, Derrick Hamilton and Kevin Youngblood long ball football. Spence has GOT to open up this part of the offense if he wants to open the rushing game up. I don’t care if it means Charlie’s percentages go down or we get less time of possession, it is a big part of the game and it motivates the crowd, and I have already stated what happened there.

Defense:

I am a defense man at heart. I will root for them to no end, so it is hard to find fault in their performance, especially considering the situation the offense put them in for the second time in as many weeks. The one threat that BC had on offense was the man that Tye Hill was covering. Obviously Tye did a great job as his man was not a top receiver and Tye got a possible game saving pick in the game. My wife’s favorite player, Jamaal Fudge, also had a good game with a end zone pick and multiple assists on tackles. The line and linebackers are what I saw problems with in the game. Now given that the BC line was, to say the least, gi-normous, the Tigers had absolutely NO pressure on the second string QB. They had one heck of a head snapping hit, but that was as close as we got to him all day. Another thing that worries me is the inability to cover the 10 to 15 yard post route that every team has pulled on us. BC was in more than one 3^rd and long situation when they would pull a post in route for the distance and have a man in the flats WIDE OPEN. This isn’t the first team to do this to the Tigers, so where is the adjustment? If it is the difference between zone and man coverage then change the coverage for a series and see how it works out! Drop a the middle linebacker for short coverage while the other two contain….do something! Overall though I can not be critical of the defense, they took what was handed to them and held the Eagles scoreless for over 3 quarters.

Special Teams:

In short Jad Dean is clutch, he should be drafted NOW. As for punting Cole Chason is in deep doo doo and I think Stephen Furr is up next. As we didn’t leave the stadium for the half we got to see the special teams warm up. Furr continuously had the perfect spiral punt that turned over at the peak and sailed for over 50 yards each time. Now many would say “that’s great, but how would he do in pressure”. To that I would say: The Eagles had no pressure on the punter all day and Chason still flubbed punts all over the field. It was only when he got a Clemson bounce that the crowd applauded the effort. On the receiving side of the ball Chansi Stuckey and Curtis Baham should be the only ones in the back to catch and run. The one question I had there was the fair catch at the 6 yard line, let it bounce son, I haven’t seen a punt coverage unit that can control a 5 yard bounce yet. I don’t know why they keep putting Coleman in kick return either as all he does is run straight for the block and then get pummeled. As was evident when he was a running back, he gets the ball and as soon as he hits turbulence becomes a tap dancing fool who doesn’t get anywhere. As for the blocking, I have no idea who is supposed to be where and when but this is the exact same crew who aided Derrick Hamilton and Justin Miller on the kick/punt return so unless those guys were THAT much better, we have some assignments gone wrong.

In the long run I am pleased in the teams performance, ending up 2 and 2 when I thought we could have easily been 0 and 4. But as any back seat driver, you have to be critical of what is obvious and that is mostly the offense. I won’t call the next game easy but it is a bit relaxed compared to the competition that the Tigers have been playing recently. Wake Forest showed some life this past weekend as they hung on with Maryland in Winston Salem, hopefully the Tigers can come off their traditional slump and avoid another embarrassment at the hands of the Deacs. I guess we will have to wait another week to see what fate has in store. In the mean time, I think I am going to buy some more Bayer as these close games are going to kill me sooner or later.

Posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 at 8:38 am by Clem

Filed under Boston College, Football.

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