Criticism: we don't seem to smell blood well enough

Oct 31, 2016, 2:11 PM

We came out against FSU unintimidated, focused, executing. Deshaun Watson showed the ice-water he has in his veins, throwing accurately and making clutch throws against an insanely pumped-up FSU defense and a frenzied crowd.

Two drives, two TD's.

And then came what we've seen too much of: seeming lethargy. We took our foot off the gas. We had not one but two possessions inside the FSU 50...and came away with zero points. One was a three-and-out that started with a Deshaun Watson deep ball to Cain that never had a chance of succeeding...Deshaun put it out of bounds, and Cain had no way whatsoever to make a play on it. Then we reverted back to what we always do when our first-down throw doesn't succeed (here's where Clemson could seriously afford to self-scout, because we're way too guilty of this): we ran Wayne Gallman up the middle for no gain. FSU had stacked the box and was duly waiting in the gaps for him, and it was stuffed for no gain. Then on third down Watson just sort of diffidently lingered in the pocket, got the ball swatted. Three-and-out. The next drive he threw an ill-advised pick trying to force the ball.

Zero points, no TD's.

At that point the game could have, and should have, been largely over. If we're up 21-0 or especially 28-0, the game starts looking a whole lot like the blowout FSU put on us in Death Valley in 2013...they're chasing the game, trying to make something, anything happen, the crowd is dead, and everything has gone sideways. At that point we need to make a couple stops, finish off one or two more drives ourselves, and the game's done and dusted.

Instead we let FSU back into the game. The crowd got back into it, the FSU team surged off the mat, and we were forced to come back and win - which we did, very definitively. Again, Deshaun's got ice-water in his veins; nobody would argue that, and the team has definitely taken on that aspect as well. When the game is clutch, he delivers. Almost always. The problem seems to be, we don't stick our boot down on people's necks quite well enough when it's easy.

The second quarter was disappointing, especially after seemingly pummeling the 'Noles senseless on both sides of the ball. While that's a trait that's been especially glaring this year, the fact is, we were guilty of that a lot last year too...most notably we let South Carolina and North Carolina hang around late in the season, and those could have cost us.

I'd really like to see us work on being a little more ruthless down the stretch. Build a lead, control the game, keep our foot on the gas, and get it over and done with. Get the melodrama out of some of these contests. When the other team is showing throat, stick the knife in. Because that lack of focus doesn't seem to be strictly Deshaun Watson's fault; you seemingly see everybody switch off too much during games - the defense starts sticking to blocks, the playcalling gets stale, conservative, and worst of all, predictable, and the difference in execution between drives can sometimes be night-and-day.

Some of that can possibly be attributed to the youth of this squad. Especially at the backup spots, there's a bunch of young guys who come in on the 3rd/4th/5th drives and that does tend to disrupt intensity and continuity. But we're at that point in the season where those young guys need to be picking it up, too. But we definitely need to be looking to amp it up another level down the stretch. We've been very good - at times. We've also been inconsistent, we've allowed far too many inferior opponents to hang around, and we need to start closing out games better. If we can fix that lack of nose for the opponent's blood we've shown thus far, though, there could well be a championship at the end of it.

Just my .02 worth. We're in the hunt...let's finish this thing this year, and that starts with finishing better in general.

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Sure, hindsight is 20/20 on playcalling but if Deshaun had not overthrown the WR on our third possession we look like geniuses.

If you didn't expect the noles to make plays on their side of the ball and climb back in the game then you haven't been watching college football for very long.

This isn't Xbox. We aren't going to score each time we have the ball, especially on the road. Deshaun had a couple overthrows and a couple bad decisions where the secondary fooled him. If he makes a couple of those throws or tucks it and runs we probably are looking at a wider margin of victory.

But again, Watson isn't a robot and to expect him to not make mistakes during the course of the game is unrealistic. I think we made great adjustments when we needed them and our offense executed them well. Was a hard fought game and the best FSU has played by far and we still pulled the victory out in a venue where it has been virtually impossible for us to win.

Not putting away Troy? Ok, i get that. But not sure playing the noles in Tally is good supporting evidence that we don't know how to put a team away early. I'm pretty sure almost zero teams have done that to them in the past several years at their place.

Criticism: we don't seem to smell blood well enough

It was bad play-calling. We should have stuck with

Yep. These games coming up are critical.***

Re: Criticism: we don't seem to smell blood well enough

Re: Criticism: we don't seem to smell blood well enough

up 14-0 our D gives us the ball twice at approximately

Good observation ...

I mean...do you really not expect FSU to make plays?

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