Clemson hosted Charleston Southern in a game that was always a question about how much they would win by, not if they would ever win. Thankfully Clemson’s defense showed up for all four quarters while the offensive continued to be here in name only. Thankfully it was enough for a 37-0 victory.
We always caution about taking away too many positives from cupcake games. But the defense absolutely get credit. A shutout with only 76 yards of offense allowed is always a great day. Yes, Charleston Southern had a great set of scripted plays on the first drive and a few other opportunities lost due to drops and other miscues, but defense did exactly what they needed to.
The offense, well it really is hard to say much beyond “They stink”. Sure we can all talk about a season high in scoring, but the truth is the Tigers scored 30 points against an FCS team. And for our starters that’s only 27 points. Against an FCS team. That’s not great. Sure put on a nice face in public, but even factoring in Dabo’s desire to not embarrass teams this is a bad performance.
This offense had a single explosive play with the starters in, a 32-yard pass to Bentancur. There were only 2 other passes that exceeded 10 yards, going for 11 and 10 yards respectively. This is not an explosive offense. Much like the last 5 years this is an occasionally efficient offense. That doesn’t win games against top teams. It barely wins you games against the middle of the pack. Sustaining a drive that consists of solely 3-5 yard plays just isn’t going to work.
Top line stats look fine. 400 yards of offense, close to 50% on third downs, and nearly 30 first downs. Everyone loves those numbers, but it should mean more than 37 points.
Hey at least special teams got some points, more efficient than our offense too.
Buckly up for Virginia Tech, it could get ugly again.