… but it’s pretty close:

Freshman wide receiver DeAndre “Nuke” Hopkins left Clemson’s practice earlier today after he suffered an injury.

Now, the exact diagnosis isn’t yet known, but this in no way can be considered good news.

• Miami and Clemson, I believe, suffer from a lack of mental toughness. Plyler goes on and on about physical toughness. But there’s a mental element to this game that neither of these teams has a firm grasp on. Without the mental aspect, physical toughness won’t matter and success will not occur.
• Dabo might be able to recruit players, but he apparently sucks at recruiting a team. (Same goes for his predecessor). If highly-ranked class after highly-ranked class leaves you with a huge gap at an important position group each year, then you’re not doing a very good job. Such a situation reminds me of the recently replaced philosophy of the Washington Redskins. Each year the ‘Skins would make a splash with a couple of high-level acquisitions. However they never bothered building an actual team, and they never found success, either.

Today he makes the case that if we just win more games, we’ll have higher win totals and be more likely to win championships. To be fair, he’s actually being stupider than I just made it sound. He’s making a point about home field advantage. He then goes to quote some home records of really good coaches, who also happen to be pretty damn good on the road. Sorry, Mickey, but when you win everywhere you play, you don’t have a home field advantage. You just have a good team. Bottom, line, it’s not about how tough you are or how big your stadium is or how many butts are in the seats, wins are wins and there’s nothing else to it.

3 weeks are in the books. The team is 2-1. To be honest, the whole situation is getting boring.

• Game 1: I sat through about 3 quarters while watching the game at Wild Wing Cafe in Charlottesville. I left after I found myself rooting for the scrappy North Texas Mean Green to pull off the upset.
• Game 2: I watched parts of the first 3 quarters on ESPN3 from the comfort of my living room. It was really boring. I tried to re-watch the game later and was unable to bring myself to pay much attention.
• Game 3: We lost at Auburn. Not that surprising, really. Nor is very surprising that the team would blow a decent lead and lose on a missed field goal (although there were certainly other opportunities to win)
• Henceforth, I intend to refer to kickers only as Kicker. I don’t want to know their names. I don’t want them to be congratulated when they do well. Nor do I want them to be criticized too much when they fail. They are delicate snowflakes and it’s probably best to keep the heat away.
• Fortunately there is plenty of upside for this team. The rest of ACC hasn’t shown very much. A conference championship is there for the taking… that is if they’re smart enough to actually take it.

Clemson is looking a little shaky at the position of place kicker. The most experienced PK on the team, Richard Jackson, is apparently still a total head case. He’s now the third man on the depth chart. It looks like primary PK duties will fall to Chandler Catanzaro. I’m not exactly sure who that is, but I bet I’ll know and hate him the first time he misses an important kick, which probably won’t happen until the Auburn game.

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Willy Korn was not with more than a hundred of his teammates at the Marshall Football Fan Day on Sunday and there is growing speculation that he will transfer before even suiting up for a game at the school.

Korn moved to safety and out of QB derby.

The Sporting News, and Dave Curtis, who would do better by not having his picture associated with his work, rank Clemson as #61 in the preseason. [Bonus, the pro-Clemson comments on the article are straight out of DSOT]Included in that is a projected record of “5-7, 3-5 (ACC).” I can’t say I really disagree with this assessment. I’ll honestly be surprised if this team does better than 3-1 OOC & 4-4 in-conference.