Snap Count Review: Clemson vs Boston College

Clemson is now 6-0, which is worth celebrating! It hasn't been the prettiest road to 6 wins, but it’s hard to argue with an unbeaten record (especially one that includes victories over two other top-15 AP teams).

After a sluggish first half, the Tigers pulled away from Boston College to cruise to a final score of 31-3. All snap counts come from the official Clemson report found here; numbers do not necessarily denote official plays, but rather non-special-team snaps.

Cade Klubnik received 2 snaps for the first time in 3 weeks in a somewhat strange wildcat formation while DJ lined up at receiver. Other than that, it was business as usual for Uiagalelei.

Shipley and Mafah are the 1-2 punch Spiller gets to roll out for the next few weeks with Kobe Pace sidelined for the immediate future. I’ll be curious to see how many touchdowns Shipley amasses this year - he currently has 8 on the season, if he matches that through the rest of Clemson’s games he could tie Travis Zachery for 6th all-time with 16 for a single season.

I’m worried EJ Williams will enter the transfer portal sometime this off-season. While he hasn’t exactly shown out on the field like we’d hoped he would this year, he still provides depth and could produce with some more development/time; losing him would make an already thin position group even more depleted.

For the second time this season, we saw all five offensive line starters play every possible snap. Cohesion and consistency have been crucial for this offense, and it’s nice to see these five continue to build on their promising start.

Talk about making the most of your opportunities. In his first live-action of the 2022 season, Xavier Thomas collected two sacks and a forced fumble, the McFadden-O’Rourke Leather Helmet Award, and ACC defensive lineman of the week honors. I’ll let you see for yourself how many snaps he played to do all that.

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7 defensive ends in total played against the Eagles, the most yet in a game this season. It’ll be exciting to see how quickly Thomas can manage a more steady workload in live action, but the little we saw of him on Saturday was certainly encouraging.

With Bresee out another week due to health issues, Tre Williams saw a career-high 26 snaps. Reuben with a nice field goal block; Capehart showed flashes in his 10 reps. Once Bryan returns (hopefully against FSU), the DT’s will be fully operational, but the depth has been on full display here in his absence.

Bentley recorded his second-highest snap count of the season, while Carter and Simpson both have now logged over 300 reps on the year.

Sheridan Jones and Malcolm Greene have yet to return, enabling Nate Wiggins and Toriano Pride to prove that they are capable of more than just the Wake Forest meltdown. Fred Davis also saw the field after only being used on special teams last week. No RJ Mickens or Tyler Venables this week - Philips and Mukuba played the majority of the game with some Covil sprinkled in.

The defense is rounding into a more complete form, closer to what most of us were anticipating at the start of the season. That is well in line with what we’ve often seen in the past with Clemson teams. The 2016 National Championship team nearly lost to Troy, Auburn, and NC State, and eventually dropped a home duel with Pitt before leveling up to dominate their post-season.