Desmond Howard stands by his Clemson "finesse" comments

Brad Mills - USA Today Sports

by Tony Crumpton - Assoc. Editor - Tue Oct 09 15:59:16 GMT-05:00 2018

The Clemson football team showed off a dominant running game in their 63-3 win over Wake Forest on Saturday night.

The running game totaled 471 yards on 40 carries which was the fourth-most in school history.

ESPN GameDay analyst Desmond Howard had a chance to retract his "finesse" comments that were directed towards Clemson's offense during Tuesday's episode of "PodcastOne Sports Now" with host Larry Lage.

However, he decided to forge forward and double down on his "finesse group" comments.

"During the show last week, we were talking about Clemson's offense," Howard said. "I don't know my exact quote, but I said if you look at the way they run the ball, they are more finesse than a power team. When you look at Alabama especially before Tua, they are more of a power running type of offense. They run a lot of power plays. Stanford with David Shaw, run a lot of power plays. That is their style running the ball is power. Clemson usually has some fast backs, scat backs, guys that are out in space doing their thing running jet sweeps. Don't get me wrong, they will run between the tackles, but they are not lining up with a fullback a lot with double tight ends just running smash mouth football. I said they are more of a finesse running team. I guess one of their assistant coaches I guess took offense to that."

Howard repeated his definition of finesse with regards to running the football.

"Finesse running attack is not about your statistics," he said. "It's about your style of running the ball, not the statistics. You can have a finesse running attack and gain over 400 yards or 500 yards. You could have a power running attack and gain over 400 yards or 500 yards. It's not about the statistics. It's not about the amount of yards you gain."

Howard wants Clemson fans to know that he is not on Twitter so don't bother sending him messages.

"Some of their fanbase (Clemson) they got a little upset and started to send some tweets my way. I'm not on Twitter a lot, so a lot of that doesn't reach me."

This all started when Howard said the Clemson offense was a "finesse group" during Saturday morning's ESPN GameDay.

"I don't see them being a physical outfit offensively," Howard said. "They are more of a finesse group; they are not gonna be a smash mouth group. You can't change who you are in the middle of the season. You are who you are. You are what you are."

Clemson co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott heard about the hot take by Howard and spoke about it after the 63-3 win over Wake Forest.

"Somebody needs to send that to Desmond Howard so he can get his facts straight," he said. "It's hard to be a finesse group when you are rushing for 300 yards a game. You would agree with that, wouldn't you?"