Clemson Game Notes

Dabo’s first game as interim head coach. Four days to prepare after Tommy stepped down. Spence gone, so a whole new page and list of things to do to prepare the offense. Can you imagine the uncertainty, the confusion, the sense of “there is too much to do and not enough time to do it” that pervaded the players and staff? I’ve been involved with management changes at work. It always takes a few days minimum for everyone to stop talking about what happened and focus on the task at hand. So I’m impressed with what Dabo got accomplished. Even though the Tigers lost 21-17, they played with focus and enthusiasm. There were very few game management glitches (unneeded timeouts, delay of game penalties, etc.). There was no dissension on the bench that I saw. I consider that an amazing accomplishment of the players and staff.

But they still lost. Still had a lead in the fourth quarter and managed to let the game slip away. Still showed that the OL is the basic weakness. Still played good defense until the chips were down.

Change a few plays in any 4-point game and the outcome could have been different. Same with this one. The press and fans have highlighted the obvious plays. The holding call on Austin on the play where the Tigers moved 20 yards on 4-12. Allowing Tech to make a first down from 3-14 on its game-winning scoring drive. Allowing the go-ahead TD on a 3-6. Tech fans can point to a few of their own plays that would have made an earlier difference, like the pass right through Thomas’s hands in the endzone. The 3-14 play particularly bothers Clemson fans because we have seen this defense give up the long third-down play too many times this year.

But, in my view, the defense played well enough to win this game. The offense did not. Specifically, Cullen Harper did not. I’ve looked at this game replay, especially the fourth quarter, several times. The thing that always jumps out at me is how many non-pressured passes Harper missed. Don’t get me wrong. Harper played a good game and made several difficult plays, good throws, good scrambles. But there were three passes that were fairly simple throws. If he hits one or two of the three, the drive continues. Who knows what would happen from there. So I put this one on the offense’s shoulders more than the defense’s. But in the end, winning football requires teamwork, picking up your teammates when they are not playing their best. And neither the offense or defense can claim success in that area.

Still, I was impressed. Impressed with the focus, the enthusiasm, the aggressive play-calling (well, except for that hook-and-ladder; but, hey, if it had worked, we’d be joyfully saying, Wow, did you see that—gutsy call.)

The open date comes just in time for this team. To get together, to get healed, to get ready to beat Boston College. Go Tigers!

I watched Dabo Swinney’s first press conference, one that he had little time to prepare for after learning early yesterday morning that he was the new coach of the Tigers. Wow, just wow. The next six weeks should be fun to watch.

What a startling day yesterday was! Many fans suspected that if Tommy Bowden didn’t at least win the Atlantic Division and get to the ACC championship game, he would be fired at the end of the season. I don’t think anyone reasonably expected (maybe some hoped) that he would be gone after 6 games. But Clemson football with Tommy has always been a roller coaster, with exciting, thrilling, and sometimes depressing, changes. The changes all Clemson fans should appreciate most were not the thrilling ones, but the program ones. Bowden built a solid foundation for the program’s future.

He began harping about facility improvement from day one, years before Terry Don arrived to actually begin the building. Cynical fans used the “must be the facilities” mantra after every loss. Bowden was eventually proved right. As the facilites improved—and it was disconcerting to learn how much more Wake Forest was spending on upgrades than Clemson was—so did the recruiting. The past three recruiting classes have been some of our best in years.

Bowden led a tremendous improvement in players’ academic accomplishments. GPAs and graduation rates are among the best in college football.

Bowden always represented Clemson with class. He was classy to the end, appearing at the press conference to announce his leaving—something you almost never see in major college football. He ended his brief statement with, “I’ll be Clemson’s biggest fan on Saturday.”

There were relatively few off-the-field problems under Bowden. That is amazing in this day and time.

So there are a lot of areas where Tommy was the epitome of a great coach. But football is football and the object is to win, especially to bring home the championship occasionally. And that proved to be Bowden’s undoing. His teams lost too often when favored, lost too many of the important games, lost too many opportunities to win a championship. He leaves my beloved Tigers in good shape, much better shape than he found them 10 years ago. He leaves the program headed in the right direction. And for that, I say

Thanks, Tommy. Best of luck.

PS Here’s a link to a similar article written much better than mine: Post by TigerTide on TigerNet

My wife and I were traveling to Seattle the day of this game so I only got to watch about a half of it. It is stored on my DVR at home, so I planned to do the Game Notes next week after I got a chance to watch the whole thing. Of course, after the Tiger offense performed as they did, after Spiller went down, after we lost another offensive lineman, the prospect of watching the 12-7 defeat again was slightly nauseating. (BTW, it would have been fun to watch the defense, who played well except for one play, one drive. Unfortunately that was enough to lose the game given the offense’s pitiful showing.) And then, I was saved from the ordeal of having to watch it again. Because the details of this game became irrelevant about 11 AM, Monday, October 13. That’s when the media began to announce that Tommy Bowden had stepped down as Clemson coach. So there was something a lot more important to follow and to write about than another unexpected loss.