Clemson rolls on
The Tigers, with many new players this season, keep up their high level of play
Weather issues in Tallahassee postponed Florida State’s matchup with Miami (Fla.) and moved Clemson and Louisville into prime time, a move the Cardinals celebrated by calling for a blackout. To paraphrase Alabama strength coach Scott Cochran, wearing dark colors meant that Louisville was properly dressed for a funeral.
Clemson won Saturday night, dominating Louisville in all three phases to cruise in its Atlantic Coast Conference opener, but the truth is the Tigers won long before kickoff — they won the moment this game was scheduled by the league offices. The game itself felt like paperwork.
“Just really a dominant performance,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.
Louisville is a nice program with a wonderful quarterback, Lamar Jackson, who even in a 4721 setback accounted for 381 total yards: 317 passing and another 64 rushing, and this in the face of the most ferocious bunch of tacklers in college football. The sensation of facing this defense must resemble the fear and panic when, on a bench press, you realize you’ve taken on too much weight. But for 60 minutes.
But Louisville isn’t Clemson. That much was clear Saturday.
The names have changed. Starters have gone, replaced by new ones. The coaching staff remains intact — Brent Venables is still running the defense, most of all; and Jeff Scott and Tony Elliott lead the offense. The culture hasn’t moved an inch. Clemson is still Clemson.
“Everybody focuses on who’s not here. I’ve never focused on who’s not here,” Swinney said. “I always focus on who’s here and who’s coming. You can’t look in your rearview mirror.”
But Louisville is just the start — the second of four true tests Clemson will face during the regular season, following the win Sept. 9 against Auburn and preceding Virginia Tech and the Seminoles.
Doing what the Tigers did to Louisville, asserting their will against a top-15 divisional rival, makes an easy case for more of the same: Clemson in 2017 looks like Clemson in 2016 and Clemson in 2015, meaning it’s time — even after just three full weeks — to pencil Clemson into the Col- lege Football Playoff and to begin thinking just who, if anyone, has what it takes to unseat the defending champion.
Few picked the Tigers to repeat. Not many more pegged the Tigers as the best team in their own conference, let alone their own division. It wasn’t until Deondre Francois was lost for the season that Clemson was vaulted into the driver’s seat in the ACC. After all — in case you hadn’t heard — Clemson lost its own wonderful quarterback, Deshaun Watson.
Unless you had Kelly Bryant, a junior who played understudy to Watson in each of the last two seasons. Something rubbed off on Bryant, who called Watson a “mentor and a big brother” after the first road win of his career. While Jackson had his highlightreel moments, Bryant ended up stealing the show.
“It’s a new team. This is a new journey,” Elliott said. “It’s a new team with the same dream. We want to accomplish the same things as last year’s team, but this is a new group of guys.”
Leave no doubt, Clemson coaches and players say as a mantra, and they did no such thing. Louisville’s starting offense drove in search of a meaningless touchdown late in the fourth quarter against the Tigers’ second-string defense only to be rebuffed just yards from the end zone. Clemson’s sideline celebrated like it was January and Watson had just found Hunter Renfrow.
“We felt like we left a little doubt the last few years,” Swinney said, referencing the previous three meetings in the series. “We came here to win the game and leave no doubt.”