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[QUOTE="sutomcat, post: 3067438, member: 27"]
Those numbers are impressive.  It remains to be seen if they can be achieved against ACC defenses, where the talent level is far better than Dino's early teams faced.

As a point of comparison, Clemson had a pretty good team last year.  Won the NC, destroyed the 2nd best team in the country head to head, had lots of AA players and future pros on the team.

They averaged 528.0 yards a game, 7.4 yards per play and 23.9 first downs a game.

Dino's 2015 Bowling Green team averaged 546.8 yards a game, 6.7 yards per play and 27.8 first downs a game.

Clemson numbers for 2017:  430.5 yards a game, 5.8 yards a play, 22.1 first downs a game.

Clemson numbers for 2016, another national championship season:
504.3 yards a game, 6.2 yards per play, 26.9 first downs a game.  This is the year Watson won the Heisman.

Last year our numbers were 466.7 yards per game, 5.7 yards per play, 23.6 first downs a game.

We were close to Clemson in passing yards (278 to 265).  In rushing yards, they beat us pretty badly (249 to 202).  We ran the ball a lot more than they did (45.6 attempts per game compared to 37.8).  The key difference is that they averaged 6.6 yards a carry running.  We averaged 4.4.

If we can improve in this area, our numbers will be in range with the Bowling Green/Eastern Illinois numbers.  Clemson has come close to these numbers but they have a lot more talent to work with than we do.

It will be interesting to see what happens this season.
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