Tigers Fail Midterm Exam

I called this a midterm exam, and we flunked it. People will say we "pulled a Clemson" and that is not true, we weren't favored tonight and this is a good football team we faced. We just made too many critical mistakes early, and screwed it up. You can't give up turnovers to good teams. We've played like shit for parts of games all season and it caught up with us tonight.

I said in the gamethread that you cannot lose in the trenches in a big game. We lost. That is the primary culprit, period. The DEs got reached all night. We did get pressure at times, but we lost the battle up front. The DL was pushed around early, we made adjustments and played better, then once the game was out of hand it got worse. Whether you put that on S&C or the coaches is up to you. I tend to put that on both.

The secondary culprit of such a loss is that Tajh Boyd played like complete dogshit. Complete. I will not sugarcoat it. If you try to argue otherwise you are a damned idiot. I'm well aware that he might be the best statistical QB in Clemson history and he deserves the accolades he gets, no denying that. However, he played like he always does when there are people in his face. He choked. He does not know how to check off a blitz. He sees it and sticks with the play, which baffles me. He fumbled the ball and gave up a fatman TD. He sensed pressure when there was none. He locked on his primary receiver when he did not have to do so. It was terrible and he will not win a Heisman, and does not deserve an invite to NYC. He shows me the same things under pressure that he did in 2010.

Clemson's OL did alright moving FSU, so I thought. We could run the ball on them. Chad Morris chose not to do so. He likes to panic and throw the ball 50 times once we're down instead of sticking with what obviously works. Typical Chad. I wouldn't trade him for anyone else, but I would like to see him pay attention to what is working on the fucking field and run the ball when FSU is giving up rushing yards. They gave it up more easily than I thought, but God forbid we stick with it.

I thought our defense played terrible on the first FSU scoring drive. After that they played better, but the back 7 appeared lost. I'd have dumptrucked Benjamin, and taken him out of the game if I were playing Safety. We hesitated and it cost us.

Bottom line, Clemson was not prepared and has lost the ACC and the national title tonight. Its not "pulling a clemson".  We choked against a good team and lost the game. You can put that on Dabo Swinney or Chad or Venables or the players, but I don't know if this team is going to be able to run the table against the weak competition we face for the rest of this season.