No pressure
Tigers stare down potential make-or-break season
Of all that has been opined about Clemson’s dominant run under Dabo Swinney, one element that doesn’t get brought up often is how well timed it was.
Three decades spent firmly in college football’s middle class since the end of the 1980s ended abruptly when Swinney’s Tigers started the 2010s in a dead sprint before vaulting into the sport’s elite of the elite just in time for the College Football Playoff era. During a time where winning between six and nine games and going to a nice bowl game became nothing to write home about, the Tigers instead tripled their collection of national championship trophies and were perpetually in the conversation in the national media spotlight.
But with another potential seismic shift in the college football landscape on the horizon and the gap between the haves and the have-nots potentially becoming wider than the distance between Piscataway, N.J., and Los Angeles, Clemson suddenly doesn’t have the strongest foothold on its spot near the top.
The raw results of the 2021 season don’t look too bad. The Tigers still won 10 games, including all of their last six, and if not for a double-overtime loss at N.C. State at the end of September could’ve still defended their long-held ACC crown. Couple that with the horrible injury luck suffered by concentrated areas of the team and it’s not hard to understand why there are many who believe the season was an anomaly.
But the tape tells a different story. Clemson barely resembled the great teams of years just gone by, particularly through the season’s first two months. Six of the Tigers’ 10 wins involved games very much hanging in the balance in the fourth quarter, and while credit is deserved for finding ways to win, there were also moments where the Tigers’ opponents found ways to lose, too. With a deeper schedule of good opponents on tap for 2022, Clemson may not be able to count on those mistakes this time around.
The majority of the blame for the Tigers’ woes in 2021 circle around the offense. After years of dazzling quarterback play leading to fireworks, Clemson fans had to suffer through watching all the wrong types of explosions, as rarely did a passing play go by without a failure of either the thrower, the catcher or the protectors. By the end of the season, an offense built on running the ball with dynamic running backs Will Shipley and Kobe Pace — both of whom return in 2022 — showed signs of improvement, but an offseason of work has gone into reconstructing a multi-dimensional attack.
That begins with junior quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei. While there’s always talk of players trying to improve in the offseason, there’s tangible proof of Uiagalelei’s offseason work in the fact that the man they call “Big Cinco” now looks more like “Built Cinco”, having lost between 20 and 30 pounds from his previously 260-pound frame. Can he recapture the magic of his two-game starting stint from his freshman campaign? If not, the presence of incoming freshman five-star quarterback prospect Cade Klubnik gives the Tigers a more viable secondary option should Uiagalelei’s struggles bear out.
But the man under center is only part of the equation on a passing play. The offensive line led by veterans Jordan McFadden, Walker Parks and Will Putnam will have to be better at giving Uiagalelei time and comfort in the pocket, while the wide receivers simply need to stay healthy, as potential starters Joseph Ngata, Brannon Spector and E.J. Williams all missed significant time in 2021 and Uiagalelei’s favorite target down the stretch, Beaux Collins, has missed much of fall camp with a shoulder injury.
Newcomers like Klubnik, speedy wide receiver Antonio Williams and tackle Blake Miller could step into big roles, but you feel like the fate of Brandon Streeter’s first offense will be decided by the improvement of those veterans.
Meanwhile, a star-studded defense led by a superhuman defensive line must learn to operate without its hero at the controls. Longtime defensive coordinator Brent Venables finally found a coaching vacancy he couldn’t turn down, and now Wesley Goodwin and Mickey Conn will have to figure out how to replicate his success. And while the front-seven contains household name after household name, the secondary is largely unknown beyond last year’s freshman sensation Andrew Mukuba.
The good news for the Tigers is all of their questions need not be answered by the time toe meets leather in Mercedes Benz Stadium on Labor Day night. Partial credit should be enough to see off Georgia Tech, Furman and Louisiana Tech.
But the tests begin in earnest from that point on, and the grading scale to prove you haven’t taken a step back from a perennial College Football Playoff contender is mighty tough.
Should Clemson’s on-field clout begin to slip in earnest, how does that affect their attractiveness in the impending realignment shuffle? With the ability to command eyeballs becoming the only currency of the realm, how much weight does an upper-middle class program in rural South Carolina have to throw around? And even if the Tigers find a way to stick the landing when the realignment earthquake begins to settle, can the program continue to attract the types and volumes of players to bridge the gap between “pretty good” and “good enough to complete”?
The answers to all of those questions look a lot better with a season much like the previous six instead of the last one.
No pressure, Tigers.
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Robbie Tinsley is an award-winning columnist from his time as the sports editor of The Journal in Seneca, S.C. He now works on a freelance basis from his home in Massachusetts. He can be reached either via Twitter @RTinMan13 or email at robtinsley13@gmail.com.
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This column also appears in the College Football Preview edition of The (Seneca) Journal on September 3rd.
