Kicker can’t hit kicks

Offense stalls in the redzone.

Parker throws an ill-advised pass – across his body – that results in an interception… yada yada yada

I’m so glad we went with “our best chance to win” Parker as the starter… so that we could get an unproductive half of football out of him before he broke a rib and was out for the rest of the game. Unfortunately for Dabo, his team performed far worse than he expected through the latter part of the season, which gave him zero return on his investment in Parker.

With this loss, I’m definitely wishing, as I had before, that we had gone to a much worse bowl to “a) punish the players for their piss poor performance this season, b) hopefully not even be noticed by anybody, and c) to play a team we might actually be able to beat.”

This season would have been much more tolerable if it had been labeled a “rebuilding” year from the start. That would have set necessary level for expectations. As well, it would have given sufficient reason to get Boyd more reps.

I’ve spent the last few days pondering the unimpressive season that just passed. It wasn’t until today that a headline make me appreciate how truly dismal this season was:

Help the Tigers go to the Meineke Car Care Bowl

I don’t want to offend the good folks at Meineke, or the good folks of Charlotte, but I’m not exactly flattered by the offer. I’m on the verge of arguing that this team shouldn’t go to a bowl at all, but I think the best thing to do is to send this team to the worst bowl possible. Here’s why. We need to go to a bowl game to get the extra practices and experience for the guys who will be starting next year. That’s why we shouldn’t skip out on the bowl game altogether. We should opt for the worst game possible to a) punish the players for their piss poor performance this season, b) hopefully not even be noticed by anybody, and c) to play a team we might actually be able to beat.

Jotting down a few comments as the game progresses:

Game Effectively Over

The NC State offense took lessons from Clemson and started dropping balls that hit their hands. The ‘Pack really collapsed.

2:01 left

I can’t believe Russell Wilson went deep on 3rd & 10 with over 2 minutes left.

2:something left

Zimmerman single and one-handedly avoided a major crisis by handling a bad long snap.

3:13 left to play:

It happened again. Just like the North Texas game, I find that I’m rooting for the wrong team.

3:18 left to play:

NC State just executed one of the worst punts in history. Wow.

6:18 left to play

Clemson takes the lead. I can’t believe it.

Thank the defense, kids.

11:38 to play

Oh, Kicker, how you disappoint.

5 minutes into the 3rd quarter:

Can’t believe NC State screwed up the downing of that punt. That was a 19.9 yard mistake on their part. On 2nd thought, maybe it was a 7 point mistake, since it took Kyle Parker less than one play to turn the ball over after making another mental mistake (and if the line of scrimmage had been on the one yard line the fumble recovery would have been in the end zone).

End of the first half:

The penalties issue isn’t much of an issue with me. The pass interference call seemed justified to me. The kick reception interference may not have been justified, but I thought any mistake may have made up for itself by sparking the team. Unfortunately, that spark was doused with a good holding call that brought back a touchdown… which then led to two huge allowed sacks that took the team out of field goal position.

In pick ‘em this week, I picked Clemson to score the fewest points this week. So far that choice is looking pretty good.

Dear David Hood, Tigernet Senior Writer, and others,

I’m sick and fucking tired of this “all in” bullshit. Please, if you’re still using this phrase, give it a fucking rest. It’s obvious that despite what Dabo is saying or doing, his team is not “all in”. Can you say that Kyle Parker was “all in” this summer when he was avoiding the team and hoping for a huge bonus from the Rockies? Of course not. There is simply no way this team, if it were truly “all in”, could be playing this shitty all season.

Please, if you’re a Clemson recruit, tell Dabo that you aren’t interested in stupid, bullshit gimmicks. And tell him that if he doesn’t get his shit together, you’ll go somewhere else. Seriously.

Rant over.

… does not imply causation. Reading from ESPN this morning, “Study: ACC’s big spenders won more.” My first reaction was, “no shit Sherlock!” In the text, I do find the word correlation and not the word causation.

Generally, these “studies” performed the Associated Press only merit mentioning because of what they don’t say. This study does not say that spending more money causes you to win more football games. It says that teams in the ACC that win the most games also spent the most money. These two statements are not equal.

I bring this up because I’m just waiting for the idiots in the Clemson fan base to refer to the study as “proof” that we have to spend more money to win. If you see anybody say that, kick them in the balls, remind them that they are idiots, and pray that they never breed.

Well the Tigers controlled their way right out of the divisional race. I expected it to happen, just not quite this soon. What a shitty performance.

Last night NC State took down FSU, making a point I failed to make in the post I published mid-game last night: although NC State and FSU are much improved over last year, both teams are very beatable. A more important point is that NC State’s victory shines light on a pretty simple road map for Clemson to get the ACCCG.

As a result of last night’s game, there are three, one-loss teams in the Atlantic: FSU, NCSU, and Maryland. Clemson trails those 3 teams by having 2 conference losses already. Clemson has games remaining against FSU and NCSU giving the team tremendous control of their own destiny. Beating both those teams assures each has at least 2 conference losses, and I’m pretty sure it would give us a tie-breaker advantage over both. The remaining question then is Maryland. They’ll have to lose one more conference game for Clemson to have a chance to catch up (but we should have tie-breaker status there as well).

It seems likely that Maryland will drop another conference game before the season is out. They have 5 games left to play: Wake, Miami, UVA, FSU, and NCSU. If they win out, they fucking deserve to win the division, but that seems like a long shot to me.

In other words, I think (because I haven’t verified) that if Maryland loses one more game, that Clemson’s fate rests in their own hands. That’s not such a bad position to be in.

A few weeks ago, after only 4 games, I agreed that a 7-5 regular season record seemed like the best estimate. Three games later and I haven’t changed my mind. While this year has some parallels to last season, the last 5 games look to be against stiffer competition than was faced last year, and it’s hard to believe we’ll do as well.

Through 7 games, it’s still difficult to get a handle on just what the competition consists of. Many teams have played 3, if not 4, out of conference games against nothing opponents that provide little insight into true composition of a team.

Let’s look at last season. Through our 7th game last year (on October 24th), our 5 remaining games were against:
Coastal Carolina (3-4, no quality wins)
Florida State (3-4, quality win against BYU)
NC State (3-4, a decent win against Pitt)
Virginia (3-4, a decent win against UNC)
South Carolina (6-2, a quality win over Ole Miss)

Through 7 games last season, I don’t think we were taking anything for granted, but the last 5 games didn’t look too bad, and 4 of those 5 were seemed very winnable.

This year, our remaining games are
Boston College (2-5, no quality wins)
NC State (5-2, a few decent wins)
Florida State (6-1, quality win over Miami)
Wake Forest (2-5, no quality wins)
South Carolina (5-2, quality win over ‘Bama)

Relative to last year, we’ve replaced Coastal Carolina and a bad Virginia team (that got their coach fired) with Boston College and Wake Forest, both of which are having a rough go of it this year. It’s not a completely even trade-off, but it looks close enough for now.

South Carolina actually looks slightly worse than they did last year based on record. In 2009 their 2 losses through 7 games were to Top-25 teams (at the time) Georgia and ‘Bama. This year their 2 losses are to ranked Auburn and unranked Kentucky.

The big differences are NC State and FSU. NC State is much improved; I don’t think there’s much room for argument there. 3-4 is way worse than 5-2. Two of the losses last year were to Duke and Wake. Five of FSU’s wins this season are against bad teams, but they’re wins. 6-1 versus 3-4? Forget about it.

It remains to be seen who will prevail in tonight’s NC State-FSU game, but both teams have looked competitive, supporting the view that both are improved over last season.

I think it’s difficult to say that Clemson has improved over last season. As such, it seems unlikely that we’ll finish 4-1 again.

Bottom line: A 3-2 finish is mildly optimistic and secures a final season record of 7-5.

PS – I’m too busy to edit. Sorry.