Week 8 Review - Clemson

Needless to say, the Clemson game was very disappointing. The most frustrating part was how much we beat ourselves.

Before we get into that, I’d like to make one point. Clemson is a good team. Yes, they have 4 losses. Yes the latest one was a somewhat embarrassing loss to Boston College. I don’t care. Like a lot of teams in the ACC, they seem to underachieve, but they are clearly capable of playing pretty well. And they did play a pretty good game against us. So I do not mean to take anything away from their performance.

However, you cannot watch that game and conclude anything other than we really made an unusual number of big mistakes that gave Clemson a lot of help. Before the game, I believed that if we played well, we could make it a good game, and we could win. I still believe that. But we lack the talent this year to overcome the kind, and number, of mistakes we made.

Here is a breakdown by half. I’ll classify these mistakes as either “Come on, Man!” or “seriously… I mean, seriously”. The latter being the bigger errors. To give you an idea of how much help we gave Clemson, I think a typical team should have about 2 or 3 “come on mans” per game, and about 10 “seriously… I mean, seriously” mistakes per season.

First Half.

“seriously…, I mean, seriously?”

- Roughing the punter. Normally this would be only a “come on man”, but on this play Sweeting probably should have blocked the punt easily. He may in fact have gotten a piece of it barely, but it was not “indisputable” so the call could not be overturned. Anyway, given how close he got to him, I don’t know how the ball wasn’t hammered backwards into Clemson’s end zone. So this mistake was huge.

- Late hit on punt return. Again this would not be a huge mistake normally, but the circumstances made it one. The Clemson runner had taken literally 3 steps out of bounds. Really inexcusable.

-Sylvester’s non sack. He blitzes and gets great pressure, and should have had Parker for an 8 yard loss. This play was especially bad because not only does Sylvester do a very poor job tackling, but he also fails to wrap up the QB’s throwing arm. After a full second of being held, but not wrapped up or tackled, Parker flips the ball out to his RB, who takes off and turns the play into a positive gain. Ends up being 2^nd and 3 instead of 2^nd and 18.

“come on man!”

- Playing freeze tag on the TD run immediately following the roughing the punter. We had two potential tacklers. The first whiffed an arm tackle. I don’t necessarily expect a tackle there, but if he at least hit him and slowed him down, others would have gotten there. Nope. Almost a complete whiff. Even so, a couple of guys got close enough to make a play. Most notably was Mario Butler #2, who got to within arms reach of Ellington, but strangely just didn’t grab him. He kept running with him, I guess hoping to get even closer? Well, too bad Ellington is faster than Butler, so he quickly lost half a step and no longer could grab him. I was totally confused by why he didn’t even try to tackle him. He was right next to him for a step and a half. (side note: we did get screwed on this play, as they pretty clearly held Jefferson and so it should have been first and 20. Oh well. Still gotta tackle. Refs miss holds sometimes).

- Hill dropping the TD pass. I went back and forth, but ultimately decided to put this in the not so bad category because Hill did a good job getting his body into position for the catch (looked a lot like Thomas on that part actually) and he was staring into the sun. But still, the pass hit him in the upper chest/facemask area, and it was third and ten. That was 7 points we just took right off the board. Killer.

- Johnson failing to down the punt at the 1 yard line. He was standing right there, camped under it, ready to make a catch, and he just whiffed. This is also in the lesser mistake category only because he was looking back into the sun. But you still have to make the play. Burying Clemson at the 1 would have given us a good chance to hold them and force a punt from the end zone (they are limited in what they can run from their own end zone, most teams just run straight ahead for a play or two to get a little space).

- Nesbitt with a very poor pitch to Roddy Jones, which Roddy scrambled back to get for a loss of 9. This was an especially bad mistake, because the play looked promising. This was partially forced by Clemson, as they got penetration, but I think Nesbitt had time to react. He was just a little slow, and then compounded the problem by throwing a bad pitch. If he recognizes faster, the pitch is easier, but he should have made it anyway.

- Extending into the second half, Nesbitt missed a very easy read, and missed it badly, on third and 4 from inside Clemson’s ten. Nesbitt missed many reads this game, which is to be expected. He maybe had a worse game than usual in terms of reads, but I don’t expect him to be perfect. However, this read was obvious… the dive was wide open. Allen probably gets the first down, but at least gets close, and we probably go for it on 4^th and short. Instead, Nesbitt was swarmed under (everyone was going for him and leaving Allen) for a loss of 2, and we kicked a FG to make it 17-6 instead of 17-10.

So, there you have it. 8 “major” mistakes, 7 in the first half alone. I would say 2 of these kind of mistakes would be an average game, 3 is bad. 8 is awful, and was a big part of the reason we lost. 3 of these mistakes, the TD drop and the combination of roughing the punter and playing freeze tag on the ensuing run by Ellington, directly cost us 14 points. That was the margin of the game right there.

Obviously, we made many more minor mistakes throughout the game, as all teams do. I do not expect us to be perfect. But I also do not expect us to throw the game away in the first half.

Given all of that, I was proud (upon watching the tape… was too angry during the game to notice) that we fought back to 24-13 and got the ball back at our own 45 early in the 4^th quarter. We got to Clemson’s 35 before bogging down. Take that in for a TD and we are right back in the game. I think that is impressive after digging ourselves a 17 point hole. To be fair, Clemson deserves a little credit for taking advantage, but really not much. If we play an average game mentally (catch the TD pass, don’t rough the punter etc) that game should have been 7-7 or 10-7 Clemson when it was 17-0. So we did basically dig that 17 point hole by ourselves.

You just can’t play like that and win, especially on the road, unless you are the much, much better team.

As for the rest of the game, my summation is that we got outplayed on both lines, and overall Clemson has better athletes. We only lost by 14 (remember we basically threw away 14 points) because Paul Johnson is a much better coach than Dabo. If we play our average game, that comes down to the wire, which should embarrass Clemson’s coaching staff given they won the battle in the trenches by a decent margin and were playing at home.

Here is a look at the numbers. There is not actually that much of a margin in my opinion. The commentators seemed shocked that the stats at half were not completely lopsided (approximately 250 to 180 yards). For some reason, they seemed to ignore the fact that we were throwing the game away.

GT First Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
GT 25	3	0	0	0	0	GT 25	Punt
GT 20	5	50	8	0	0	CU 40	Punt
GT 17	4	18	4.5	0	0	GT 35	Punt
GT 12	13	53	4.1	1 (5 yd)	1 (3 yd)	CU 35	Downs
GT 20	15	71	4.7			CU 9	FG

You can see that besides the first drive, we moved the ball pretty well. The second drive should have been a TD, and the last one could have been as well with marginally better execution inside their ten yard line. From watching the tape, it didn’t appear that we had any major execution issues overall, aside from a few isolated poor plays. We just could not block their line very well, so it ended up being something of a guessing game. If we made the right read on the option quickly, we could move the ball some. However, they were beating our blocks badly enough that they were sometimes able to take away all three runners. Even when they could not do that, they were aggressively getting into the backfield, and attacking Nesbitt. I liked their strategy of trying to guess keep or dive rather than just taking one and making it obvious. By doing this, they gave up a couple of 20-30 yard dive plays, but they forced a lot of negative plays that really put us in some bad spots. They also keyed on Nesbitt, who I think is our best runner. So their defensive game plan I thought was actually pretty good.

Clemson First Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
CU 24	3	6	2	0	0	CU 30	Punt
CU 45	1	55	55	0	0	GT 0	TD
GT 45	8	33	4.1	1 (3 yd)	0	GT 12	FG Miss
CU 20	11	60	5.5	2 (3, 3 yd)	0	GT 20	FG
CU 26	6	74	12.33	0	0	GT 0	TD
CU 35	6	21	3.5	1 (5 yd)	0	GT 44	Punt

I counted the first drive as a “drive” even though we roughed the punter, because I don’t put that on the defense. Anyway, I had no major problem with our defensive scheme. We did a poor job of clogging the middle, which is pretty common, but the real problem was very poor tackling. We gave up a handful of third down conversions, and an awful lot of extra yards, with some very poor tackling sprinkled throughout the game.

With the exception of the two TD drives, we played pretty good “bend but don’t break” defense. And the first TD drive was one play of simply atrocious tackling. Some of the poor tackling should be a credit to Clemson’s runners being hard to tackle, but many times, including the 55 yard TD run, I thought our guys did not appear to be playing with much energy.

GT Second Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
GT 25	11	66	6	1 (1 yd)	0	CU 9	FG
GT 22	14	78	5.6	2 (11, 10 yd)	2 (2, 6 yd)	CU 0	TD
GT 44	5	24	4.8	0	0	CU 32	FG Miss
GT 35	1	0	0	0	0	GT 35	INT

Pretty good offense in the second half. If Nesbitt makes the right read on third down (and this is the play where the read was OBVIOUS) inside their ten yard line on the first drive, we would have scored two TD’s on our first two drives. We certainly moved the ball well. Daquan Bowers made some really good plays on the third drive to stop us once we get into Clemson territory.

Clemson Second Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
CU 31	8	69	8.6	2 (6, 6 yd)	0	GT 0	TD
CU 21	3	0	0	0	0	CU 21	Punt
CU 32	15	64	4.3	2 (1, 12 yd)	0	GT 4	FG

More very uninspired looking football on defense in the second half. The first drive ended with a pitiful effort to tackle Ellington. Butler (I think it was Butler) basically fell over backwards from backpedaling at his own goalline. I don’t care if you miss the tackle, but when your back is to your end zone, press forward a little bit and try to hit him. It was third down, and we had a chance to force a field goal. The way we tried to tackle him, even if we got him to the ground (which we didn’t) it would have been in the end zone. Awful.

And then the third drive is where we let them run out 8 minutes, including converting a 3^rd and 12 or so when we had to at least suspect they were gonna run. And the did. Between the tackles. For 15 yards. Sigh.

First Half

GT		Clemson
9	First Downs Allowed	11
8	Third Downs Forced	9
4	Third Downs Stopped	6

Not much to talk about here. Third down conversions (obviously) are huge, and Clemson stopped us 2/3 of the time. We only stopped them half the time.

Second Half

GT		Clemson
8	First Downs Allowed	8
7	Third Downs Forced	7
2	Third Downs Stopped	4

More of the same. They stopped us twice as often as we stopped them. Gotta make the plays.

Here is a look at the game stats:

	GT	Clemson
Rush Yards	242	236
Yards Per Carry	4.9	6.2
Pass Yards	83	167
Yards Per Attempt	4.2	6.2
Total Yards	325	403
Yards Per Play	4.8	6.2
Points	13	27
Turnovers	1	0

The biggest edge goes to Clemson in terms of yards per play. Ellington’s two big runs, 55 and 42 yards, helped make that margin so big. Other than yards per play, the stats look mostly even. Clemson was able to out perform us in the trenches, and that made it easier for them in our red zone and very tough for us in theirs. That, along with all of our mental errors in the first half, was the difference in the game.

What does this mean for the rest of our season? Well, hopefully not much at all. Even if we did not have very good coaches, I would not expect us to have a game where we made so many silly mental mistakes again. We simply played a remarkably poor game in that regard, and it should be our worst of the season. I would certainly expect us to be a little mentally sharper out of a bye week.

As far as our ability to compete in the trenches, Clemson is probably the best D line we will play all season. Miami is also very good, and UGA is not too far behind, but it should not be a huge concern that we struggled against the Tigers. As long as we continue to improve in terms of knowing our blocking assignments and executing them quickly and correctly, we should be fine on offense the rest of the way. Provided that we start catching the ball anyway… Its hard to keep running when teams know you can’t throw, and if you can’t catch, you have no threat of being able to throw.

The D line is a bigger concern. Clemson’s O line is not that good. We competed ok at times, but Clemson won that battle, and we are likely to see better O lines the rest of the way. VT may not be much better, but Miami and UGA should be significantly better than Clemson was up front. Especially UGA.

Oh well. Tough loss. Let’s put that one behind us.

As always, Go Jackets!

Week 9 Picks

The review of the Clemson game is coming. But I am taking my time with Tech having a bye week.

Every week I will pick all the ACC games against the spread, as well as the biggest national games of the weekend, and occasionally the UGA game, even though UGA games are unlikely to fit either of those two criteria.

There will be three categories. “Free Money” are the games I feel the most confident about. “Solid bets” are next, and then “Toss-ups” are the ones that could go either way. I’ll keep track of how I am doing with a chart that I’ll update each week, so you readers can make fun of me for (probably) being sub .500 and correctly picking more “Toss-ups” than “Free Money” bets.

Once again went exactly .500 on “free money”, which is not exactly how its supposed to work. Oh well. Auburn cost me by a point and a half. And Wisconsin did in fact win. But UGA and VT covered easily.

Another very bad week on “solid bets”. Mizzou, Clemson and Miami all covered, so that’s 0 for 3. And 1 for 8 counting last week. Ouch.

Finally, good news. 3 for 4 on “tossups”. Maryland, Navy and Nebraska all won bets like I predicted. But believe it or not, UVA actually covered a spread, so that is the one loss.

So far on the season:

Free Money	14 for 27
Solid Bets	12 for 32
Toss Ups	13 for 24
Total	39 for 83

Not exactly impressive numbers there…

So let’s try to fix it. Here are this week’s picks.

Free Money:

Miami is favored by only 14.5 at UVA. That’s too easy. Take the Canes.

Clemson favored by only 6.5 over the defense of Boston College and the offense of Boston’s Second Presbyterian Church. I wonder when BC is going to recruit actual division one athletes to play offense again? Take the Tigers to cover.

UGA is a lock to beat Florida by more than 2.5.

Solid Bets:

I think the Wolfpack have something for FSU. Nobody can go through the ACC without taking at least a couple losses, so the Seminoles need to start here. FSU is favored by 3.5 at N.C. St.. Take the Wolfpack to win that bet.

I bet Maryland will beat Wake by more than 5.5. Sure. Yeah. Go for it.

Iowa favored by 6.5 at home against #5 and unbeaten Michigan St. This looks like the place where Michigan St.’s fairy tale season ends. But I think Michigan State makes it happen, and they might even win out. But either way, they lose by less than 6.5.

Navy beats Duke by more than 13.5, because, really, its Duke.

Toss-Ups:

Letdown for Mizzou? Maybe. And if they show up with something less this week, Nebraska could embarrass them. But I think Missouri brings it for one more week. At the least, they won’t lose to Nebraska by more than 7.5.

Oregon favored by 6.5 at USC. The ducks have looked unstoppable, but the way the Pac-10 usually goes, I say this is a toss up. But still give me Oregon to cover that.

No Nesbitt jokes, since we are not playing this week. Don’t worry, they will return.

Week 8 Quick Review - Clemson

We lost this game in the first half, and really the first quarter. We made 3 games worth of huge mistakes in the opening 6 minutes. When I say huge mistakes, I am ignoring things like poor reads, missed blocking assignments, poor tackling or busted coverage assignments. By huge mistakes, I mean things like:

- Personal foul roughing the punter (in a situation where simply running into the kicker would not have been a first down). Most puzzling on that play was how he managed not to block the punt.

- Personal foul late hit out of bounds on their first punt return. This was dumb for two reasons. One, the runner had taken about three steps out of bounds before the hit. Two, Egbuniwe didn’t really even hit him that hard. I mean, if you are going to get a late hit, at least get your 15 yards worth.

- Hill dropping a touchdown pass that hit him in the facemask. That was third and 10 from Clemson’s 40, and we punted after that. So that just takes 7 points off the board.

(In other news, Stephen Hill is wearing on me. He had two drops today and also gave up an interception. Granted, the interception probably didn’t matter, as it was with 3 minutes left and we were down by 14. But it was only picked off because the defender was able to tip it, and that was because Hill jumped up in the air but for some reason tried to catch the ball at his waist. Go up with your hands Hill! You are 6’5. Go get the ball. It was thrown well. Make a play.)

Anyway, those three are the only huge mistakes that stand out, but I remember thinking to myself at the time that there were others. I will make a comprehensive list when I review the tape.

Those huge mistakes were all unforced by Clemson, and they swung the game by at least 14 points, and probably more. If Stephen Hill catches that pass, and then any one of the following 3 things happen:

1 – We don’t rough the punter

2 – We don’t completely whiff two tackles on Ellington’s long run

3 – The ref calls the obvious hold on one of our linebackers on Ellington’s long run…

Then the game is 7-3 when Hill makes his catch, and is 10-10 at halftime. And its not like I am going through the game and saying “well if we simply hadn’t made all of these mistakes…”. Fixing those three plays is far from playing a perfect game. I don’t expect us to be perfect. But piling up stupid plays like that can really kill you, especially on the road against a pretty talented team. I think your average college team can expect to not make any mistakes like those in a normal half. Or certainly not make 5 or 6 like we did.

Other than that, the game was not nearly as bad as it looked. We still have plenty of problems. Our defense is too easy to block and does not tackle well. Not much Groh can do about that, so I have a hard time blaming the coaching. You have to make yourself hard to block and make tackles. Offensively, our offensive line did not compete very well. Clemson has a very good D line, but we could have made it a little harder on them. Even as poorly as we blocked, we still had chances, but when you don’t block well, you have to execute the rest of your offense very well, and we didn’t. Nesbitt missed several reads. (I am starting to think that he does not trust anyone but himself to carry the ball on third down because he keeps the ball himself so often on third when other reads are pretty obvious). He also missed some pitches I thought were there and some gives to Allen that he should have made.

Don’t get me wrong, Nesbitt played a good game. The bigger problems were the blocking, our tackling on defense, and throwing the game away in the first quarter with those mistakes. But Nesbitt did make some errors, and if he had not, we may well have been in it because we moved the ball well enough to get a few touchdowns if we had made proper reads consistently.

Overall a very disappointing loss. But what does it mean for the rest of the season? Well, it really has little effect on either of our top two goals of 1 – winning the conference and 2 – beating UGA. Yes, it does hurt our conference record, but look at it this way. We probably needed to beat VT and Miami even if we beat Clemson. And now, if we beat Miami and VT, all we need is the winner of VT – UNC to lose one other time. That could very well happen. So if we win out, I like our chances.

But will we win out? Well we sure don’t look very good. Clemson may well be the most talented team we will face all season, and they did appear to play a decent game. Their receivers certainly played better, and their defense had a good game. It is possible that with the bye week, we could make some improvements and get a few wins down the stretch.

But, for now, let’s just say I am not real confident. We need to improve a lot.

However, we did have an up and down season in 2008 just like this year, and that ended pretty well. We lost a game at UNC in which we looked terrible (much like today) and then beat FSU, Miami and UGA, which pretty much no one gave us a chance to do after losing to UNC. Also, the last time we were beaten soundly at Clemson, 2006, we won the Coastal.

So there is hope, but things need to change.

Week 8 - Picks

Every week I will pick all the ACC games against the spread, as well as the biggest national games of the weekend, and occasionally the UGA game, even though UGA games are unlikely to fit either of those two criteria.

There will be three categories. “Free Money” are the games I feel the most confident about. “Solid bets” are next, and then “Toss-ups” are the ones that could go either way. I’ll keep track of how I am doing with a chart that I’ll update each week, so you readers can make fun of me for (probably) being sub .500 and correctly picking more “Toss-ups” than “Free Money” bets.

Finally had a week where I was not below .500 on “Free Money” bets. But I was exactly .500, so not so good. UGA covered easily, as did Clemson, but N.C. St. took a nosedive and UNC, well they did in fact prove they could finally play well at UVA. Oops. 2 for 4.

Ooh. Hmm. Tough, tough week in my solid bets. FSU almost lost to BC, so they didn’t even come close to covering. Miami was closer, but only beat Duke by 15. VT did cover against Wake, and Auburn covered easily against Arkansas. Although on that one I think I was screwed by Mallet’s injury and the instant replay guys. Pfft. Good thing I bet on GT. 1 for 5.

0 for 2 on tossups. Nebraska did not cover, and in fact actually lose the game. As did Ohio St. Rough week overall for me.

So far on the season:

Free Money	12 for 23
Solid Bets	12 for 29
Toss Ups	10 for 20
Total	34 for 72

At least I am back up to where “Free Money” is leading. I guess that’s something…

Here are this week’s picks.

Free Money:

UGA is an absolute lock to win by more than 3.5 at Kentucky. But here is a funny article… http://www.kentucky.com/2010/10/18/1484034/cats-think-they-can-win-sec-east.html. Check that headline out. That’s right, someone at Kentucky actually is worried about the Cats “looking past” UGA. How do you look past a team that is a much better program than you, beats you nearly every year, and has a better conference record THIS season? Yeah I don’t get it either.

Virginia Tech is favored by 26.5 over Duke. If they can beat Wake that badly, I think they can beat Duke that badly. Take the Hokies.

Iowa favored by 5.5 against Wisconsin. Look for a let down here after the Badgers big win. Plus Iowa is probably actually better anyway, and their defense is great against power running, which is basically all daaaa Baaaaadgers can do anyway. Hawkeyes cover 5.5.

Auburn is favored by 5.5 over LSU. I maintain that both of these teams are overrated, but they are both clearly worthy of being ranked, so this is a big game. Cam Newton hasn’t been very good against good defenses this year (and Clemson and Miss St. arguably don’t even qualify as “good”) so I expect LSU to slow him down big time. Of course, LSU doesn’t have much of an offense. I think it comes down to a kick, which LSU will of course win due to Les Miles’ deal with the devil. (don’t believe me? Its like Pat Forde said, look at LSU’s ranking in the BCS, AP and Coaches poll and tell me you don’t find it strange that their all “6”).

Solid Bets:

Clemson favored by 5.5 over GT. Given our decided coaching advantage, I am taking the yellow jackets here. I actually think Clemson will find a way to lose the game late, but if they win, I bet we cover.

Miami favored by 6.5 at home against UNC. I think UNC’s ball hawking secondary capitalizes once again on the pick machine that is Jacory Harris. I think the heels win, so I am confident they win the bet as 6.5 underdogs.

Oklahoma favored by 3.5 at Missouri. I think Mizzou is good, but they don’t win big games. Take the sooners.

Toss-Ups:

Boston College is actually favored by 3.5 against Maryland. Even after last week, I still think BC is not very good, and Maryland, while not being very good, is slightly better. FEAR THE TURTLE.

Notre Dame favored by 6.5 over the midshipmen. Not really a big game, but its Paul Johnson’s old stomping ground. I am taking the midshipmen with the points.

Oklahoma St. is a 5.5 point underdog at home against Nebraska. I think the huskers get back on track here. Tough break for the pokes. They were doing so well.

UVA favored by 24.5 over Eastern Michigan. I’ll take the (Eastern Michigan mascot – plural) to cover that. Not convinced at this point that UVA could beat the Georgia Tech chapter of Pike by 24.5.

Nesbitt Jokes:

1 – When the boogey man goes to bed at night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris checks his closet for Tim Tebow. Tebow doesn’t check his closet for anything. That’s because he knows Joshua Nesbitt has his back.

(#2 is not original once again this week, but its funny, and I am running out of creativity. And the ones I make up aren’t that good anyway… I know, I didn’t have to tell you that).

2 – When Joshua Nesbitt sleeps, his bed moves 3 yards.

Week 8 Preview - Clemson

Clemson week always seems to be a little more exciting than most of the rest of the season. It’s our conference rival. It’s only about 100 miles on I-85 for the opposing teams fans. And it always seems to be a close game with a great finish. In fact, 6 of the last 8 games have been decided by 10 points or less. 5, 3, 4, 10, 1, and 4 to be exact. And those all happened to be GT wins, strangely enough. Clemson apparently can only beat us if they do so in a blowout. They did beat us by, uh, er… 24 and 36 in their two most recent wins. So in our 6 wins we beat them by a combined 27 points. And in their 2 they beat us by 60. Luckily for us, this weekend figures to be a close game. So we should be good. Of course, the 2003 and 2006 editions of the rivalry were supposed to be close as well… nevermind that.

My two thoughts going into this game: 1 – Is Clemson the best 3-win team in the country? 2 – Are we the worst 5 win squad?

I don’t really think we are the worst 5 loss team in the country, but on paper we aren’t real impressive. Sure we have looked better in the last 9 quarters, but we had to come back in the 4^th quarter to beat a real bad Wake Forest team, and then UVA and Middle Tennessee are not exactly murderer’s row. I think we can play a lot better than we have so far. We have put together some really good drives and some really good quarters, but at some point, if you want to be a good team, you have to play well for an entire game.

What about Clemson? Hard to figure the tigers. They certainly pass the look test. They appear to have some real animals on defense, and some playmakers on offense. Ellington is probably not as good as Spiller was (who is?) but he may be awfully close. And yet, they found a way to lose three winnable games in a row, so they are 3-3 and their best win is against Maryland.

It gets very strange when you look at the stats. The team that beat Clemson the worst this season, statistically, was Miami (that is if you only look at Clemson opponents that actually won the game… more on that in a minute). They outgained Clemson by 60 yards, and only ran 3 more plays than the tigers. Next is probably Auburn. They only outgained Clemson by 10 yards, but they ran 21 fewer plays, so that’s a healthy advantage in terms of yards per play. Then again, I don’t think I am alone in thinking Clemson should have won that game. North Texas arguably beat Clemson worse than Auburn did, as they outgained them by 30 yards (what? The? ****?). But they ran over 30 more plays to get those yards, and of course they did lose the game. All that indicates Clemson probably hit some big plays on special teams and forced some turnovers. Clemson outgained UNC by 50 yards in the third game they lost.

The oddest thing though was how badly Maryland whipped Clemson in Clemson’s most impressive win so far this year. They gained 350 yards to Clemson’s 210, and averaged 5 yards per play to Clemson’s 3. Those are pretty big margins. Of course, Clemson being Clemson, they found a way to lose the stats that badly and still win the game 31-7. Really an impressive level of inconsistently and selective futility. But seriously, how do you get beat that bad by Maryland? This is a team that needed 4 turnovers by Navy inside Maryland’s 10 yard line so they could hang on to win by 3. They beat Duke by 6. They got blown out by a big east team! (No, it doesn’t matter that it was West Virginia. All 2010 big east teams are completely interchangeable, and also atrocious.) At least Clemson got the win, but as with most Clemson games, something about it left you shaking your head.

In other news, recent studies have shown that prolonged exposure to a Clemson football jersey causes migraines and temporary insanity in almost any species of test subjects.

So Georgia Tech can’t seem to play well for more than a few series at a time, and overall has looked underwhelming. Clemson has looked very impressive but their best talent seems to be throwing the game away. Put those two together and you find yourself with a difficult prediction to make. The only thing I feel confident about is that Clemson will leave most people scratching their heads after the game about something. Whether that is a “how did they play that well and manage to lose?” or “how did they beat GT 56-10 without outgaining the jackets?” is anybody’s guess. Or it could be something else entirely.

I expect our offense to find a few points, mostly because I don’t think Clemson’s defense is terribly smart or terribly well coached. Here is an interesting, if poorly written, article from a Clemson blog that details some of the idiotic nonsense Steele used to defend the triple option in the ACCCG:

http://www.shakinthesouthland.com/2010/10/20/1762242/kevin-steele-vs-the-triple-option

Clemson has a really good defensive line, but their linebackers are less than amazing and do not play very intelligently. And as the above article discusses, Clemson’s defense is not always very well coached. If our offensive line would play well, and regularly make the proper reads with regard to their blocking assignments, we probably would be able to exploit the mistakes Clemson is likely to make. But I don’t think our offensive line is quite there yet. I hope they really start to click in the next few games, but I don’t think it will happen this week.

Even so, Clemson’s only real chance to keep us from scoring in the mid 20’s is for their defensive tackles to beat us up somewhat like Iowa’s were able to do last year. That is a possibility, but I think our offensive line is a little stronger this year, and Clemson’s D line, while very good, is probably not as good as Iowa’s last year.

All that adds up to GT being ok offensively, but if we let it become a shootout, I am not sure we can keep up. I think Clemson is athletic enough to give us some problems, and force a few turnovers. If we don’t beat ourselves too much with mistakes, then I predict 24 or 28 points, which should be enough at least to give us a chance to win the game.

Thus, because I don’t think they will shut us down but also don’t think we will score at will, my key to the game is our defensive line against their offensive line. Clemson has the playmakers to hurt us if we give them space. Their athletes, like Ellington, are very good. The margin between their athletes and ours is probably not nearly as large as many Clemson fans would have you believe, but its probably not as even as most GT fans would tell you either. However, I have not been real impressed by Clemson’s offensive line so far this year. Our defense typically plays pretty well if we are not getting pushed off the ball. The problem is that we are all too often easy to push off the ball. But if Clemson can’t push us around, and I don’t think they will, then our defense could have a pretty good game. Depending on who you talk to, Groh is either a bad, mediocre, good or great defensive coach. However, I believe Clemson fans are pretty much unanimously in agreement that their offensive coaching staff, led by Billy Napier, is not very good.

So we have a coaching advantage and a defense that is normally pretty good at everything except power run defense. I think if Clemson can’t push us back any better than I think they can, we might be able to hold them under 20 points.

Of course, we should at least discuss our other main defensive weakness, that being occasional busted assignments in the secondary. They do not happen that often, but when they do, we don’t mess around. We let guys get WIDE open. Parker is easily a good enough quarterback to take advantage should we forget to cover anyone. We did so frequently against Kansas, UNC and N.C. State. Busted assignments have been much fewer and further between since then, but once again, how much can you really tell from beating Wake, UVA and Middle Tennessee St.?

Of course, Parker being good enough to hurt us if we bust coverages is only half the equation. Clemson’s receivers have, somewhat remarkably, been breathtakingly bad this season. You look at their recruiting rankings and it makes you wonder. I mean, running pass patterns and catching isn’t really that hard is it? Then again, our guys don’t seem real good at it either.

Anyway, I am most afraid of Ellington and Harper on runs or coming out of the backfield as receivers. If our defensive line does a good job competing, we will have a much better chance to slow those two down. I predict we do play well up front, and while Ellington and Harper get loose for a few big plays, they don’t end up being enough.

Special teams and trick plays always seem to play a role in this rivalry. Not sure what to make of that. Paul Johnson may have some tricks up his sleeve. Not too worried about Dabo. The most recent tricks he has tried have resulted in GT touchdowns. There was the reverse pass in 08 that was pick-sixed, and then the FG-punt that Tarrant took back to the house last year.

As far as special teams, Clemson is very good in both punt and kick returns. Our kick coverage has been excellent this year, but punt coverage not so much. Hopefully, we won’t be punting much, but if we do, look out. Our kickoff return unit has been good, but the punt return has been non existent. If it comes down to a field goal, Blair has been near perfect this year. He was 9 for 9, including 4 for 4 (I think) from beyond 40 yards, before he finally missed a 41 yarder against MTSU. Clemson’s kicker I would describe as average, but he did miss an easy one to lose the game against Auburn in OT.

I know that I picked us to lose to Clemson in my preseason picks, but then again I had us coming in at 7-0, and Clemson coming in at something like 5-1. So obviously I don’t know what I am talking about…

With the benefit of the first half of the season, I will now change my pick to… (drumroll) nothing. I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen. However, no self respecting blogger declines to pick a game. I foresee a close GT win. I know, not exactly going out on a limb according to recent history. Well, I don’t care. I think history repeats itself for one more year. I think it will be a close game, and that gives us the edge because Paul Johnson (+ Al Groh to a lesser extent) > Clemson’s coaching staff.

Sagarin’s computer says that Clemson should beat us by 4 on a neutral field, which means a 7.5 point win at Clemson. For what its worth. And Phil Steele’s power ratings have Clemson 3 points better than us.

But I don’t care…

I’ll call it 24 – 21, with Clemson of course doing something in the 4^th quarter to help us win and to further antagonize their fans.

As usual, let’s take a look at the talent on both teams, as illustrated by espn.com’s recruiting rankings. But, once again, the team with the edge in this analysis has not overwhelmed so far this year. We had a big edge on Kansas, gave up a big edge to UNC, had a big edge on Wake, were about the same as N.C. St. Etc. But here it is anyway.

	2007			2008			2009			2010
	GT	Clem		GT	Clem		GT	Clem		GT	Clem
Best	81	81		80	95		80	82		80	83
Top 5	79.4	79.4		78	86		79.4	81		79	80.4
Top 10	78.5	77.9		77.3	83.5		78.8	79.3		78.2	79.4
Avg.	75.65	75.1		76.53	80.2		76.85	78.58		77.06	77.95
Total Players	20	20		15	24		21	12		16	23

As you might expect, Clemson is predictably unpredictable even when it comes to recruiting. The 2008 class is out of this world. That was the one that most people ranked in their top 5, and espn has #2. But in 2007 they actually had a worse class than us, and 2009 and 2010 were a little better but not that much. Looks like a decent talent edge in favor of Clemson, but not overwhelming.

Here are the stats for both teams on the season:

	GT	Clemson
Rush Yards Per Game	328.14	165.33
Rush Yards Per Carry	5.77	4.47
Rush Yards Allowed	151.71	143.33
Rush Yards Allowed/Carry	4.05	3.77
Pass Yards Per Game	85	181.33
Pass Yards Per Att.	6.92	6.44
Pass Yards Allowed	195.57	214.33
Pass Yards Allowed/Att.	6.52	6.59
Yards Per Play	6.0	5.3
Yards Per Play Allowed	5.2	5.1
Points Per Game	31.9	30.8
Points Allowed Per Game	23.1	19.3

Clemson has played the 63^rd (Sagarin) toughest schedule as compared to us playing the 111^th, so factor that into these stats. Overall, the stats look pretty even, except that we have a slight edge most places. They have a slight edge in point differential, which is probably the most important though. Anyway, GT having a slight edge statistically in most areas against a weaker schedule is consistent with the two teams being roughly even.

If the Clemson team that should have won at Auburn and the GT team that did win in Chapel Hill both show up, it could be a very entertaining game. More specifically, if the GT offense from the first half against UNC and the GT defense from the second half against UNC show up. And if the first quarter and fourth quarter Clemson team from the Auburn game show up. You get the idea. Of course, if the Clemson team that played North Texas and the GT team that lost to Kansas show up, we could also have a very entertaining game, but for different reasons.

My goals for the game:

Win.

Usually I list statistical goals for the offense and defense, but I think stats go out the window anytime Clemson is playing anybody (see above analysis of Clemson’s season thus far), and just in general I’ll take any win I can get in Death Valley.

Go Jackets!