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I don’t know that I’ve ever been as disappointed in a 38-17 win in my life. We slept through that first half. We’re just lucky they stunk it up too.
Clemson put up only 295 yards of offense against a terrible defense. Our offensive line played probably their worst game of the season in pass protection, even though I’d hold Tajh responsible for at least 2 of those sacks. He wasn’t sensing the rush and wasn’t stepping up. They weren’t fantastic at run blocking inside but Andre Ellington had 6+ yards per carry and we can’t call more run plays so we don’t go 3&out?
As an aside, how is it that your starting QB and RB end up with about the same number of carries? 19 for the RB, 20 for the QB. 5 ypc for Andre today; he should've received 25 carries minimum. Hot Rod got 2 and DJ got only 1.
Ask yourself how do we typically get a rhythm going? Run the ball, run Tajh, call some screens and get him into a completion rhythm. Our screen game wasn’t there today and I bet it had as much to do with Tajh having a bad day as our OL protection. Once he hits a few screens in a row, and carries the ball once or twice, he starts hitting everything. If you can’t get one after that, then run AE more. The Chad did not call a great game, but the offensive line play goes back to how we’ve practiced the last two weeks. You can see it was not good, and it better get fixed for Wake Forest quickly.
I think this was one of those days where we just out-athlete the other team. Tajh played like crap but we still won, so we should just be thankful. They don’t have enough to cover our weapons in space for 60 minutes. If we’re clicking today we put up 60 points. Nearly all our drives started at midfield.
The defense is just what we’ve got. The first half looked like a defense that practiced with thud tackles for two weeks, especially the secondary. The middle of the defense was bad, and allowed 99 yards rushing to a slow TE playing QB. They are horrid and did not show any improvement against a bad offensive team coached by Mike O’Cain. At least in the 2nd half we won some battles at the POA and swarmed the ballcarrier much better up front. That was probably the best thing I saw from the defense all day. We’ve played better in the 2nd half for a few weeks in a row, but it is definitely all relative. Give VT a decent OC and they don’t flounder the whole 3rd quarter. 406 yards, 7.1 per pass play and 5.3 per rush is much better than 17 points. #O’Cain’d.
If Dabo doesn’t want Jonathan Meeks to learn how to wrap somebody up, then he should get him off the damn field. I’m sick of seeing him run right at somebody only to dive at ankles that aren’t there, grab someone without being able to get them down, or just take so bad an angle that he’s nowhere near the play. He returned a pick that hit him in the chest. If he had had to use his hands or arms, it goes incomplete.
Clemson will have a curfew for the team tonight and there will be Sunday practice with the quick turnaround. Tajh’s injury has been classified as a stinger while Robinson’s ankle X-rays turned up negative. There may not be a film review posted of this game before the WF game.