"All In" to "All Done"
by DrB on Oct 30, 2010 3:10 PM EDT
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This post sponsored by Sleepy Don and the Clemson Athletic Department
If we had won, there would be two ways to look at that game. The optimists would say we fought hard and overcame adversity to win a game where we clearly got outplayed and outphysicaled. The pessimists would say that we still don't use the talent on the team, that Kyle Parker played awful, and that Dabo Swinney is clearly in over his head.
But unfortunately for the optimists, the Tigers lost. The pessimists are right about this game. Now the axe should start swinging. I know it won't midseason, but it should. 4 losses at this point in the season is unacceptable, especially with one coming to a team as bad on offense as Boston College. When Dabo was hired, I said I'd give him 3 full seasons, but if this team loses two more games then he doesnt even deserve that. 7-5 with this team, with Parker returning, is unacceptable. 8-4/7-5 is what I expected with Tajh taking snaps.
You the fans must let the Administration know this, and if you want people gone, then you should keep in mind that the axe needs to start swinging at the top, in Sikes Hall, before it makes it over to McFadden and the WEZ.
The only really good thing I can take away from this game is that the defensive staff can make an adjustment, but I already knew that much. Steele has always made (other than the ACCCG) good halftime adjustments, so I was confident that BC wouldn't continue to pound us up front. We didn't miss tackles and we played gap sound defense and good coverage, which you'd get from an experienced defensive staff.
But the Head Coach is responsible for the whole team coming out flat. You cannot argue this point with me.
Whether or how much Dabo interjects in offensive playcalling is debateable, but we think he is behind the rise of the shotgun/4-wide spread offense we're trying to run, which is against our current strength. We do have talent at WR, and they do need reps, but you have to play to your strength and what you're best at. When you deviate from it too far, good teams will make you look stupid. You can always work on the passing game within the system while staying true to your strengths, but getting away from establishing your identity wherein your strengths lie leaves you with no identity on offense whatsoever.
BC has a good defense. They have always played very sound, but rarely flashy against us. They stick in their gaps and make tackles, and they play very good zone. They did so today. What Clemson did not do, which we alluded to in the game preview, was just take what they give you with that coverage. Kyle Parker played bad, and I would've pulled him at one point in this game to shake him up. I would've put him back out there for the simple fact that he still gives the team the best chance to win now. After looking over his whole performance, he did not give them a great shot today.
Kyle Parker had happy feet today, and all season to be honest. He does not stand in the pocket and deliver. He feels rush where there is none, and then doesn't plant his feet to throw. That makes him throw weaker balls at times. He also rolls out to his right, and the best we usually get on that dumb waggle pass is a 4 yard pass to the TE. The 2nd and 3rd routes behind him are always covered or Parker just waits too long to deliver and they end up at the boundary and covered. He still throws across his body, back over the middle, which I'd expected him to quit doing with another year of coaching. Also, and this was most disappointing, he doesn't read all his receivers. He locks on one side, and doesnt look backside. He thinks he's going to get one guy open, and doesnt see that the D gives him something that will just move the sticks underneath that. Today he even forced some that should've been thrown out of bounds.
For those who don't know defensive X's and O's, there is one thing you have to understand: when you will just take what the defense gives you, they will eventually give you the game. Every defense makes a tradeoff, deep for short, field for boundary, inside vs outside runs, etc. You may have to out-athlete them to take advantage of it but they give you something. Most defenses use disguise to hide their tradeoff, and some like Saban do it so well that you don't see what they are giving you. BC gives you short checks over the middle with the backs, and they give you underneath routes. They go in with the idea that you won't beat them deep, so they give you short. The checkdowns for Parker were open, and he didn't have them every play (bad design), but he didn't take them when they were. He didn't read their zone coverage any better than last season against them. Thats a lack of coaching.
Then the running game, which we didn't try much of in the 1st half in part due to limited success, and didn't stick with in the 2nd. When Ellington went out I knew we'd go pass mode, but we didn't run the ball when he was in there. We still don't feed the ball to the best player, which has been the story of the last decade or so.
Special teams was bad, and now I'd have to let Richard Jackson have it. We missed two FGs and lost 16-10. Bad offense or not, you have to hit the FGs under 40. Catanzaro is just missing too many easy ones.
7-5 is likely, possibly worse. We just fired a guy who went 8-4 every year. So are you All-In or All-Done?
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picture speaks a thousand words
what were your two ways of looking at the game? or are you still working on finishing the post
No problem, and I love that picture.
Only thing is, there’s no Bill Murray to make this movie a little bit more bearable. Not enough Andie MacDowell either to look at.
Observations
Now 0-3 on the road – not being able to handle “difficult” environments
Now 0-4 in games decided by 10 pts or less — smells like coaching to me
However, Dabo will tell you that we are 23 points away from being undefeated
Im all done. Looking forward to November 12th to see the other tigers start out the season with W Carolina. T
No Point Firing The Coach
… if the same idiots in the Admin are still there. Heads should have rolled after they let Bowden play them into a new contract , then fired him with the big payoff 9 months later. It’s not easy getting a proven winner nowadays at any program (see UT/Dooley), and one is not going to come to CU with this Admin.
well it should be easy for dabo to carry his sorry ass right out the door
by 5knklshfl on Oct 31, 2010 12:27 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I'm Done.....
I never was “on” the Dabo band wagon anyway . With all of the available coaches we could have gotten , I thought making him the Head Coach was a typical Barker / Phillips move . He seemed to be a good recruiter , but definitely not HC material – yet anyway .
However , I have watched Clemson play only to the level of our competitors for over 20 years and not even that well some of the time , never dominating like we did in the 80’s .
I am sick and tired of the mediocrity mindset in the administration , and even with some of the fans . Why even play if you don’t expect to win . The players should have the “we are going to dominate and wis this game” every time they walk out on the field -and we haven’t had a coaching staff instill that in our players in over 20 years…….from Hatfield until now , we have gotten to the “here we go again” stage EVERY damn year at some point . I know we can’t win them all , hell nobody can – not even Alabama . But , in Alabama , Coach Saban expects more out of his players , and for them to believe that when they step out onto the field , any field , that they are going to execute , and win – even if it aint pretty .
Hopefully , one day , enough of us will make things happen again for the better in Clemson by showing the "mediocrity "administration from the top down – the door .
That will never happen until enough of us STOP sending them our money .
All Done as well
I was not a fan of the hire. I didn’t like a lot of Dabo’s decisions in the South Carolina and Nebraska games in the 1/2 season that he coached. I was hoping that we would clean house and not bring him back. Every game he continues to validate my original thought.
Dabo’s record is 13-12 against AQ teams and TCU. That is flat out not getting the job done.
I'm All OUT
Of patience, that is. I didn’t like the Dabo hire when we well could’ve had Gary Patterson according to what I’ve heard. We all know TDP should’ve been fired right along with Bowden. I started watching Clemson football when I was 8 years old and Charlie Pell was coach. I revelled in the glorious Ford years and saw Clemson reach the pinnacle of college football. But for 20 fucking years now all I’ve saw is cluster-fuckery and I’m damn tired of it!!!!!!!!!! I want Phillips gone before ANY decesion is made on the next football coach. Get Dwight Clark in here as AD and let him make a CLEMSON hire! Not sure we could lure Patterson from TCU now, but damn….surely there’s a guy out there that could do better than what we saw today. It’s EMBARRASSING to be a Clemson fan now…EM-FUCKING-BARRASSING!!!!!!!!!!!! This program should’ve never gotten to the point it’s gotten to. I wants heads to roll.
Dwight Clark has been at the top of my list for awhile
Long record of being an executive in the NFL.
Clark is interesting. he hadn't occurred to me, though honestly I did not know where to begin to look for a new AD.
I wonder if Clark would give DF an interim position to help with hiring a new HC and staff, and maybe even handle the football team until then. I can always dream, at least.
Yeah, yer dreaming lol…Danny doesn’t want to coach football anymore and even if he did there’s no way the current admins would ever want him associated in any way with clemson.
by veryveryproud on Oct 31, 2010 4:33 AM EDT up reply actions
All Done.
12 years is enough of the same old shit. TIme to move on. Enough said.
by Tiger Rag Fishing Team on Oct 30, 2010 10:15 PM EDT reply actions
I think we need to go a bit further up the food chain than just the AD...
As obsessed as the administration is with bumping up Clemson’s ranking in some magazine-nobody-read’s annual college ratings*, I am not optimistic we will go All-In on hiring a first rate AD, never mind a proven football coach. It really does seem to all go back to the decision to fire Danny Ford and why that decision was made.
*As far as I can tell, schools game those ratings so hard as to make them pretty much irrelevant anyways.
by A Balrog of Morgoth on Oct 31, 2010 1:23 AM EDT reply actions
How do you replace a president and board of trustees?
the BOT has to approve the president I think, and as long as the BOT is populated as it is (you know who I mean), we won’t get the president we are hoping for, which then carries downward.
So the question becomes, how do you replace the BOT?
These guys are like Supreme Court justices
There are 7 “life” members who elect their own successors and 6 elected by the state legislature. The epitome of a good ole boy system.
They are pretty much untouchable and in large part have contempt for the Clemson football fan.
They don’t like the spot light. If we want change, intense pressure needs to be put on the BOT.
Sadly
I think you have to wait for people to retire or die. It seems the current BOT and President have a vision of a Clemson University that fields a top twenty ranking in some dying magazines’ college issues, but not a top twenty football team in the BCS and AP polls.
As someone who is not an alumnus, I have to confess that my interest in that sort of thing is not very high up on my list of stuff I care about vis-a-vis Clemson. I would be perfectly happy with a respectable A&M school that gives a shit about having a good football team. I liked Clemson better when that’s what it was.
by A Balrog of Morgoth on Oct 31, 2010 2:57 AM EDT reply actions
If it weren't for Danny Ford , we would be considered a Golf school....
even Oliver Purnell said “to hell with it” obviously…
How in the world????
I’m still shocked they lost that game. I knew it would be a tough game but thought they’d win. Dabo is an embarrassment. I wish he’d pack up and go away. Go back to ’Bama and sell insurance, or real estate, or used cars.
BC had only beaten weber state and kent state. How in the fuck do you lose to a 2-5 team?
Well at least after USuC comes in and monkey stomps Clemson in Death Valley hopefully somebody will be fired. I’d love to see TDP and Dabo and the entire coaching staff fired at the end of the year.
To use the gambling psychology...
his hire was a gamble. One that I actually liked… a young hungry coach, with a propensity for handling adversity, and who seemed to connect with our young talent.
If he worked out, we got a really good hire and let him earn his keep.
Of course, if it didn’t work out… we would lose 3-4 seasons of progress.
I believed his attitude and background would benefit our team… and mistakenly I believed that the CUAD was committed to putting better product on the field.
Of course, if this were a poker game… I’d be flat out busted.
To paraphrase LBJ… If Dabo has lost me… then he’s lost Tiger Nation.
It reminds me a lot of Jim Zorn in Washington
He went from being a QB coach in Seattle to the Redskins Offensive Coordinator. Then when the ‘Skins couldn’t find a head coach, he was promoted to Head Coach. He jumped from a position coach to head coach (just like Dabo). He started off great at 6-2 and the fans loved him even though in his press conferences he didn’t make any sense (a lot like Dabo). Then the wheels fell off, he started making boneheaded decisions, playing the wrong players, and the team started losing a lot of games they shouldn’t have been.
Sound familiar? Zorn was dumped after 2 seasons and now the product on the field is better. I hope Clemson takes a similar path.
TDP sucks!
He’s single handedly ruining all of our athletic programs. Look at the brilliant hire he made for the soccer team. What a disaster. I hope Brownell works out, but again he went with a small time cheap hire.
Who knows, maybe he’s just following orders from Barker. Maybe Barker really doesnt care as long as there is a competitive team on the field thats all he cares about.
As long as fans donate to IPTAY & Clemson, buy tix, and attend games, nothing will change.
The administration doesn’t care about a bunch of angry letters. They care about money. If donations dropped to zero, they’d change things so fast it would make your head spin.
True. One other thing they wouldn't like is negetive attention.
from the press on why the Clemson Administration does not support football with the same “by any means necessary” approach it has with the top 20 obsession.
Ask the BOT why they are threatened by a national football program.
Is there not ONE guy on the BOT or IPTAY
who feels this way?
This movement needs a leader.
We need somebody high up who wants to revive the football program and lead the charge publicly and privately. We need someone that IPTAY would back as well (a guy like Dwight Clark, perhaps).
With IPTAY’s $30M behind him, “Leader X” could do an awful lot of palm greasing to guarantee that would happen.
BC had the #4 ranked run-D and the #80 ranked pass-D.
So I would have expected Dabo/Napier to pass early and often, using the pass to set up the occasional run. But prior to the last 2 desperation drives (of obviuosly all passes) here’s what they did that seemed to put the offense in a bind.
On 1st down:
Clemson rushed 67% (14-of-21) for 3.9 YPC.
They usually got behind the chains and put Clemson in obvious passing situations.
BC dropped 8-9 into coverage.
So Clemson failed to convert 70% of the 3rd down passes (with 1 interception).
Clemson picked up one rushing 1st down.
What happened on the 33% (7-of-21) times that Clemson threw on 1st down?
Clemson had a 71% completion ratio.
Clemson averaged 11 yards per attempt.
Clemson picked up two 1st downs.
I would have expected Dabo/Napier to look at how BC’s non-cupcake opponents put up points on BC this year. For example, NCSU put up the most points on BC (30 points) with a 2:1 pass-to-run ratio, including 76% passes on 1st down. VT put up the fewest points on BC (19 points) and passed 53% of the time, including 29% on 1st down.
Apparently they thought it would be better to emulate the teams that put up the fewest points. I don’t get it. Clemson’s coaches just seem weak at game-planning and play-calling.
Called it.
I said he would pull that crap this week – the one week we need to pass more.
Then again, AE wasn’t doing that bad.
Ellington went 14-for-42, averaging 3.0 YPC. He also did poorly against the #4 ranked run-D.
It reminded me of 2007 when Rob Spence spent most of his play-calls running against BC’s #2-ranked run-D instead of passing against their #110 ranked pass-D. Deja poo. (That’s French for "We’ve seen this crap before.)
I guess it depends on how you define "success" but here are the numbers:
1st Half Runs
Ellington: Runs of 0, 6, 4, 2, 1 = 2.6 YPC
Harper: One run of 2 = 2 YPC
Parker: One run of 5 = 5 YPC
Brown: One run of 1 = 1 YPC
2nd Half Runs:
Ellington: Runs of 5, 4, 1, 7, 7, 14, -3, 2, 0, -6 = 3.1 YPC
Harper: Runs of 4, 0, 7, 4, 4 = 3.8 YPC
Parker: Scramble for 17 = 17 YPC.
When Clemson passed on 1st down they got 11 YPA with a 71% completion rate.
It has gotten to the point where I no longer have anything to say. Everything has been said enough and the dead horse has been beaten long enough. I am sick of being disappointed in football teams with too much talent. I am sick of seeing incompetent coaches roam the sidelines. I am sick of having sunshine blown up my ass because they think it will make me feel better about the state of the program. It is time for a revolution…
Absolutely right. I want to hunt down each and every one of those morons chanting
“Hire Dabo” because of the “big” win over USuC and beat the tar out of them. Its because of fools like them that Terry Dumb Phillips made the cheap and emotional hire. I mean seriously, what other BCS conference school would hire an ex-insurance salesmen to be the head coach?? NONE!!! Barker should walk in and demand Terry Dumb Phillips’ resignation today and then demand Dabo’s tomorrow. We’re a national laughingstock athletically speaking.
ALL IN!
THE RESULTS OF THIS POLL ARE DISAPPOINTING. IF U ARE A TRUE CLEMSON FAN,I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT U HAVE GIVEN UP ON OUR TIGERS. I FEEL REALLY GOOD WITH DABO WITH THE REINS. HE WOULD NOT BE THE HEAD COACH UNLESS THE PLAYERS DIDN’T LIKE AND RESPECT HIM.YES,WE HAVE THE TALENT TO WIN,AND THIS IS FRUSTRATING,BUT I TRUST AND BELIEVE IN DABO.
WHAT ARE U ALL DONE FANS GOING TO DO IF AND WHEN DABO IS SUCCESSFUL.?I SUSPECT THAT U WILL COME OUT OF THE WOODS AND FILL THE VALLEY.
ALL IN I AM!
SAM SMITH
I'm right here...no need to yell.
I can’t take anyone seriously if they do not even know how to turn caps lock off. If you cannot take off your orange tinted glasses and look practically and realistically at the state of our program then you are the disappointing one.
You say we have the talent to win, we have had the talent to win for 10 years and we still can’t get the job done.If we have the talent to win then why don’t we? Since our last ACC title FSU has won 12 Conference Titles; GaTech 2, VaTech 3, Maryland 1, UVA 1, Wake Forest 1. Wake Forest did what we haven’t been able to do in 20 years with inferior talent, facilities, and funding at a BASKETBALL school. And you have the nerve to come tell us that we are crazy for thinking the way we do?
With regards to you comment about Dabo, just because a person is respected and liked does not mean they are good at their job. Dabo is a hell of a salesman. He is a wordsmith and make most people believe what he wants them to. Doesn’t mean the wan knows everything about the x’s and o’s of football. Dabo is the reason we have no offensive identity because he doesn’t trust his coordinator enough to let him call plays. If he does not trust Napier enough to let him do his job why did he hire him?
My largest concern about Dabo is nothing has changed since TB’s firing. We still have top end talent in the conference, still pulling great recruiting classes but not capable of developing players once they set foot on campus and putting a winning product on the field. We hired TB’s WR coach as head coach, made his QB coach OC, kept his OL coach on staff, promoted an assistant to WR coach, and kept the RB coach. The only competent and successful coach on staff was let go.
I have shared my opinion and I am interested in hearing why you are so optimistic about our program and Coach Dabo Swinney, so please do respond.
by Clemson Caniac on Nov 2, 2010 8:43 AM EDT up reply actions
If youve been a Clemson fan since the 70s
and give blind faith to the coach, you supported Red Parker, Hootie Ingram, Tommy West and Tommy Bowden. How did those work out? Did you give each of them blind faith like you are Dabo Swinney? Somehow I doubt it.
Sorry but saying someone is less of a Tiger fan for not liking the coaching staff is absurd. You can still show up and be loud and love your tigers even if you hate the staff.
by DrB on Nov 2, 2010 8:48 AM EDT up reply actions
raise hell with The Board and IPTAY now!
Fire off letters and make calls; don’t just run your mouth on the blogs; here is my letter to the CEO of the BOT;
David,
It appears Dabo is another Tommy Bowden. His record shows the same trends; getting great recruiting classes but never able to win a game as underdog and losing to teams we should beat. Let’s not wait 8 years to make a change.
How about a complete makeover this time? You know the old saying "the fish stinks from the head down"? In this case I clearly think the head belongs to President Barker and every board member who does not demand championships from our athletic programs and hold those responsible accountable. Since Max Lennon was in office we have not had accountability in our sports programs and I am tired of it.
Clemson can be a successful top 20 academic institution and maintain successful athletic programs if the President and Board of Trustees demand it. Why can’t we have top ten athletic initiative? Without change now all athletic programs will continue to stagnate.
I am pissed off and will continue to make a stink until change for the better is made. No doubt these sentiments are held by many and hopefully will get attention from The Board soon.
Can you help me here David?
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