SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- We will be playing a team gunning for a national championship and a quarterback who is going for the Heisman Trophy. They will not. The highly ranked teams that we have played in the past were teams that tended to look past us. Clemson has no room for error this year. A 12-1 Clemson team will not be playing for the national title. They will not be thinking about any other team but Syracuse tomorrow
- Match-ups are as important in football as they are in basketball and our defensive secondary doesn’t match-up with their passing attack at all. I thought we’d have a good secondary this year because we’ve been recruiting pretty good athletes there in anticipation of playing in the ACC. But our guys showed a regrettable lack of co-ordination early in the season. When Allen Robinson came into the Penn State game, Christian Hackenberg immediately hit him with a 25 yard pass and then a 51 TD bomb. Later he clinched the game with a 54 yarder to a wide-open Geno Lewis for a 54 yard score. We talk about how that game was a close game that could have gone either way but if Robinson had not been suspended for the first half, we might not be saying that. Then Northwestern hit us for 375 yards and 4TD passes in a 27-48 loss that was 7-34 at halftime. Wagner had no passing game at all. Tulane had a mediocre one but hit a 45 yarder when Durrell Eskridge waited for a poorly thrown ball to come to him and got out-maneuvered by a shorter receiver who got in front of him and caught the ball. Now we will face Tajh Boyd, Sammy Watkins and a bunch of other guys who will be playing on Sunday. They will be looking to bomb us early and likely will, taking the crowd out of the game and us out of our game plan, (which will probably be based on running the football), and will result in Terrel Hunt and his less talented playmakers trying to win a shoot-out with Boyd and his friends. No dice.
- Many of our great wins in the past have started with big plays, sprung on the opposition when they were still “cold”. The most famous was the 80 yard bomb off the option look to Rob Moore to start the Penn State game in 1987 and the 95 kick-off return by Kirby Dar Dar off a reverse that opened the 1991 Florida game. That punched the other team in the nose right away, got the fans right into it and energized the team to a dominating performance. Coach Shafer in his news conference said: “The key to scoring points against the Tigers is "staying within ourselves," Shafer said, explaining that you don't want to add in a double-reverse pass simply because this is a huge game. You must stay true to the plays that got you here, the plays that got Syracuse back to .500 once Terrel Hunt assumed control of the offense” (quoted from the Post Standard). So what we will do is open with the quick out that has no blocking and never goes anywhere, then send Jerome Smith up the middle for 3-4 yards, then throw a pass to Jeremiah Kobena, which he will drop. Of course, that will come after we defer to the second half and let them open the game with the ball anyway.
- We all saw that 33-70 Orange Bowl disaster the Tigers had vs. a West Virginia team we’d beaten by 49-23 in the Dome two years ago. Now we can forget it. This Clemson team has a defense. They held LSU to 219 yards and 24 points in their bowl game last year, which they won. And since winning that shoot-out with a powerful Georgia team in their opener, they have given up 34 points in three games. Vic Beasley is a bit undersized but very click and he’s supposed by good size and strength in the center of the line and bigger linebackers than we have. They are supposed to have questionable secondary but do we really have the type of passing game that will test them?
- We sure looked good vs. Wagner and Tulane. Saul Alvarez sure looked good against his sparring partners. Then he stepped into the ring vs. Floyd Mayweather.
- People are thinking this will be 2013’s version of our great Dome victories over West Virginia in 2011 and Louisville in 2012. It’s more likely to be a replay of the 2013 Northwestern game. The image that kept returning to mind as I contemplated this game wasn’t the 1984 Nebraska game or the 1987 Penn State game or the 1991 Florida game. It was the original Rocky movie. And it wasn’t the famous “Gonna Fly Now” training sequence. It was the scene after that where Rocky stands in the ring and realizes that, as much as he wants to win and as hard as he’s worked, God just didn’t gift him with the abilities of his opponent. He goes home and tells Adrian that he knows he can’t win but if he can go the distance, then at least people will know he’s not just some bum from the streets. I just hope we can give these guys a battle. Then the country- and the ACC will know that we have a team worthy of their respect.
- Match-ups are as important in football as they are in basketball and our defensive secondary doesn’t match-up with their passing attack at all. I thought we’d have a good secondary this year because we’ve been recruiting pretty good athletes there in anticipation of playing in the ACC. But our guys showed a regrettable lack of co-ordination early in the season. When Allen Robinson came into the Penn State game, Christian Hackenberg immediately hit him with a 25 yard pass and then a 51 TD bomb. Later he clinched the game with a 54 yarder to a wide-open Geno Lewis for a 54 yard score. We talk about how that game was a close game that could have gone either way but if Robinson had not been suspended for the first half, we might not be saying that. Then Northwestern hit us for 375 yards and 4TD passes in a 27-48 loss that was 7-34 at halftime. Wagner had no passing game at all. Tulane had a mediocre one but hit a 45 yarder when Durrell Eskridge waited for a poorly thrown ball to come to him and got out-maneuvered by a shorter receiver who got in front of him and caught the ball. Now we will face Tajh Boyd, Sammy Watkins and a bunch of other guys who will be playing on Sunday. They will be looking to bomb us early and likely will, taking the crowd out of the game and us out of our game plan, (which will probably be based on running the football), and will result in Terrel Hunt and his less talented playmakers trying to win a shoot-out with Boyd and his friends. No dice.
- Many of our great wins in the past have started with big plays, sprung on the opposition when they were still “cold”. The most famous was the 80 yard bomb off the option look to Rob Moore to start the Penn State game in 1987 and the 95 kick-off return by Kirby Dar Dar off a reverse that opened the 1991 Florida game. That punched the other team in the nose right away, got the fans right into it and energized the team to a dominating performance. Coach Shafer in his news conference said: “The key to scoring points against the Tigers is "staying within ourselves," Shafer said, explaining that you don't want to add in a double-reverse pass simply because this is a huge game. You must stay true to the plays that got you here, the plays that got Syracuse back to .500 once Terrel Hunt assumed control of the offense” (quoted from the Post Standard). So what we will do is open with the quick out that has no blocking and never goes anywhere, then send Jerome Smith up the middle for 3-4 yards, then throw a pass to Jeremiah Kobena, which he will drop. Of course, that will come after we defer to the second half and let them open the game with the ball anyway.
- We all saw that 33-70 Orange Bowl disaster the Tigers had vs. a West Virginia team we’d beaten by 49-23 in the Dome two years ago. Now we can forget it. This Clemson team has a defense. They held LSU to 219 yards and 24 points in their bowl game last year, which they won. And since winning that shoot-out with a powerful Georgia team in their opener, they have given up 34 points in three games. Vic Beasley is a bit undersized but very click and he’s supposed by good size and strength in the center of the line and bigger linebackers than we have. They are supposed to have questionable secondary but do we really have the type of passing game that will test them?
- We sure looked good vs. Wagner and Tulane. Saul Alvarez sure looked good against his sparring partners. Then he stepped into the ring vs. Floyd Mayweather.
- People are thinking this will be 2013’s version of our great Dome victories over West Virginia in 2011 and Louisville in 2012. It’s more likely to be a replay of the 2013 Northwestern game. The image that kept returning to mind as I contemplated this game wasn’t the 1984 Nebraska game or the 1987 Penn State game or the 1991 Florida game. It was the original Rocky movie. And it wasn’t the famous “Gonna Fly Now” training sequence. It was the scene after that where Rocky stands in the ring and realizes that, as much as he wants to win and as hard as he’s worked, God just didn’t gift him with the abilities of his opponent. He goes home and tells Adrian that he knows he can’t win but if he can go the distance, then at least people will know he’s not just some bum from the streets. I just hope we can give these guys a battle. Then the country- and the ACC will know that we have a team worthy of their respect.
