Clemson Football: Did One Ultimately Disappointing Drive Save Clemson’s Season? No Clue, but I Want to Believe

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I’ve been trying to think of something to write about the Tigers all week. Not going to lie, I said some hurtful things and thought even worse as the UNC game dragged on toward the end of the 2nd quarter. Clemson was down 17-3 to a team whose coaching staff spent the last two seasons trying to recreate Studio 54 in coaching offices. I could feel my teeth grinding as the announcers relentlessly glazed Bill Belichick, but there wasn’t much to say in response.

Folks, I was sending out Old Yeller GIFs to my football friends; I was ready to call the time of death for the Dabo era.

Then it happened….

Hold on, let me back up…

First, the defense held UNC to a 3-and-out on 3 straight run plays, mostly because London Merritt decided that if no one else was going to make a play, maybe he should, and finally tackled someone in the backfield instead of being in position to tackle someone in the backfield, only to allow them to struggle forward for 5 yards.

Bill Belichick, who, if you haven’t heard, is building a professional operation at UNC, must have felt fairly confident that his defense was up to the challenge of stopping the Tigers from traversing 90 yards in 5 minutes. That was fair; Clemson’s previous drive had netted Chad Morris’s offense -6 yards in 3 plays. I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence either; I mainly hoped Tait wasn’t about to throw a back-breaking interception heading into the half.

Then it happened (nailed the timing this time).

Chad Morris directed the offense on the first drive of the season that I recognized as a Chad Morris-engineered drive, at least in terms of the positive meaning of that phrase. Before Tait hit T.J. Moore on a 7-yard stop route to start an 18-play, 88-yard drive that ended with a disappointing field goal as time expired, I would have bet my house on Clemson not being able to put together a 10-play drive, much less an 18-play drive.

At the time, I was several beers into watching a Clemson football game and didn’t appreciate what I had witnessed, but all I could think about was the stupid field goal from the 2-yard line. You don’t beat good teams by kicking short field goals. Luckily, the professional operation Bill is running at UNC is more reminiscent of his time as the Browns head coach than his Patriots era.

Looking back, though, the drive at the end of the half provided the first glimmer of hope that maybe hiring Morris was a breath of fresh air, and not a death rattle for the program. Before the drive ended with a thud, I was briefly transported back to 2011, when Chad’s entire life revolved around running as many plays as possible over the allotted 60 minutes of playing time.

The drive went like this:

1. 1st and 10: 7-yd Pass to Clemson 17 – T. Moore
2. 2nd and 3: 2-yd Run to Clemson 19 – G. Davidson
3. 3rd and 1: 3-yd Run to Clemson 22 – T. Reynolds
4. 1st and 10: 2-yd Run to Clemson 24- T. Reynolds
5. 2nd and 8: 4-yd Run to Clemson 28 – T. Reynolds
6. 3rd and 4: 6-yd Pass to Clemson 34 – T. Moore
7. 1st and 10: Incompletion Deep Left – B. Wesco
8. 2nd and 10: 11-yd Run to Clemson 45 – G. Davidson
9. 1st and 10: 13-yd Pass to UNC 42 – T. Brown
10. 1st and 10: 4-yd Pass to UNC 39 – O. Patt-Henry
11. 2nd and 6: 3-yd Pass to UNC 37 – G. Davidson
12. 3rd and 3: 7-yd Run to UNC 28 – G. Davidson
13. 1st and 10: Incompletion – Short Middle – B. Wesco
14. 2nd and 10: 19-yd Pass t0 UNC 9 – B. Wesco
15. 1st and 10: 7-yd Pass to UNC 2 – B. Wesco
16. Incompletion – Spike
17. Incompletion – Short Right
18. Field Goal

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This drive (once again, excluding the ending) encompassed a grocery list of things I’ve wanted to see from Chad Morris and Tait Reynolds wrapped up in a neat 18-play package. When Reynolds picked up a drive starting first down with QB-Power on 3rd and short, I grumbled approvingly. When he rolled out on 3rd down and found TJ Moore, I propped myself up on the couch.

This felt vaguely familiar.

Reynolds misfired on a shot play to Wesco on first down, but I didn’t mind the call. Shot plays downfield after picking up a first down were a staple in the Chad Morris Vol 1. offense. The miss didn’t matter because Giddeon Davidson ran for a first down on the next play with a well-timed draw call that was executed flawlessly by left tackle Brayden Jacobs and left guard Elyjah Thurmon. It turns out that Giddeon is pretty good at running the football when he’s not having to wrestle with a defensive tackle for the handoff.

Then things really started flowing. Instead of forcing a pass downfield, Reynolds used his legs and picked up an easy 13 yards with a dart to Tyler Brown. Or rather, we picked up 13 yards on a difficult play that Reynolds made look easy. An offense that, at points, looked like it didn’t comprehend the objectives of football against LSU started clicking.

Reynolds fired the ball outside to O.P.H. for a gimme 4 yards and a clock stoppage.

After Davidson got stuffed leaking out of the backfield on a short pass, and the subsequent timeout, Morris put his trust in Davidson, Jacobs, and Turmon to pick up 3 yards. Davidson found another massive hole between his left tackle and left guard and, once again, turned a short run into a longer run by making the first man miss.

Chad was cooking, and I was now fully engaged.

Tait narrowly missed Wesco down the seam on what would have been a spectacular play. Then he came back on second down and made a spectacular play, hitting Wesco on a crossing route while a Tarheel defensive lineman attempted to drag him to the ground. Clemson needed a play, and the quarterback delivered! That was a common occurrence around these parts since Chad Morris took over the offense in 2011, but times have been so tough in that department recently that I didn’t know how to react.

Thankfully, the offense didn’t let me get too excited. They bungled the clock and ended up having to settle for a field goal, but this drive changed something in both Chad Morris and Tait Reynolds. The defense got the stop it needed coming out of halftime, and the offense looked different. Reynolds really did look like Tim Tebow on the first drive of the second half on a 17-yard scramble that included completely ignoring UNC’s first attempt at a tackle and then burying the next would-be tackler into the turf. That run got me excited, but the next play got me off the couch. Morris cashed in all the wide receiver screens with a fake screen and go to O.P.H. for 24 yards. For the first time all season, it felt like Clemson’s offense was attacking the opponent’s defense instead of being attacked by the opponent’s defense. Of course, Tait took the Tebow comparison a little too far on the next play when he uncorked one of the worst deep balls to a wide-open receiver since Tim was chucking hand grenades down the field in New England for that one coach who, what’s his name, Bill…something-or-other.

The thing is, that play was open.

The offense worked exactly as it was supposed to, and any semblance of a decent throw ended up with a touchdown. That was the right call, at the right time, blocked perfectly, and it only failed because our quarterback temporarily forgot how to throw a football. Of course, I was disgusted that two of the season’s most promising drives ended with a collective 3 points.

The defense redeemed Tait’s arm punt on the next play by forcing a fumble, but whatever hope was starting to sputter in my cynical heart was extinguished when the offense failed to pick up a first down and had to settle for yet another Hauser field goal from inside the 10-yard line. I will say that for the first time all season, I was engaged enough to transition from apathy to anger and may have unleashed a torrent of profanity in the general direction of my television.

Then something crazy happened. The defense kept getting stops, and the offense started moving the ball like they’d just been messing with us for the first two weeks. The run game started grinding on the Tarheels’ defensive front, and as soon as the Tarheel safeties got too interested in the run, Morris dialed up a slant to Wesco, and Reynolds hit him in stride for a 41-yard gain. The drive ended 5 plays later with a 27-yard strike to tight end Christian Bentancur on another perfectly timed fake wide receiver screen. For the second time in the half, UNC thought they had Morris’s number and instead got burned by a counter from the Clemson offensive coordinator.

The Tigers would go on to close out the game by scoring 3 touchdowns on their final 4 offensive possessions, and if not for an inexplicably bad throw, would have cashed in 4 touchdowns in 5 seconds, half-possession for touchdowns on a defense that was supposedly professional-grade.

I know the play call to Brown at the end was risky, but I’m glad he took it to the house. I’m tired of playing big-brained football. The vibes around the program have been rancid, and that touchdown made me happy. I would like to think I wouldn’t have written a scathing article calling for the immediate arrest of all involved if UNC had driven down the field to tie, but I’m probably giving myself too much credit. Brown didn’t make the right play, but he made the fun play, and if I remember correctly, college football is supposed to be fun and not whatever we’ve been experiencing over the last 14 or so games.

Of course, I’m not willing to announce the return of the Golden Age of Clemson football. Beating a basketball school with a washed-up head coach in Death Valley should be par for the course, not a thrilling surprise, but you know what…screw it.

I’m going to enjoy things this season, and I had a big, dumb smile on my face at the end of this game.

Hopefully, that’s the same look I’ll have at whatever God-forsaken hour the game ends tonight/tomorrow morning. Rest assured, even if I’m not smiling, my face will be dumb.

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