Clemson's defensive strategy
For those who watched the Clemson Defense last night, I was wondering what your assessment is.
Did Venables' approach seem to be a solid one? Did they sprinkle in enough ZONE against LSU's approach of seemingly giving no indication they were going to run the ball and would it have made a difference if they did or didn't? Did they ever Spy the QB with the all-world, hopefully Top 3 pick, Simmons?
I noticed they used 7 Defensive Backs and 3 down linemen a majority of the time and matched their top corner up with the Biletnikoff winning sophomore J. Chase.
Any second half adjustments that anyone noticed?
January 14th, 2020 at 9:26 AM ^
Since they gave up 628 yards, I'm going to go with no.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:45 AM ^
Unacceptable! FIRE DON BROWN!!!
Did I do that right?
January 14th, 2020 at 9:46 AM ^
Yes, you did. (chef's kiss)
January 14th, 2020 at 10:00 AM ^
The funny (or maybe not so funny) thing about it was, this is the exact same scheme Don Brown uses, except with better down lineman. At least the nose and tackle position. And by that I mean, 300 lbers. Fact is, LSU has a fabulous team with a a #1 pick at QB. Clemson is almost as good offensively, but LSU's defense is better.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:07 AM ^
I honestly hope this shuts the FIRE DON BROWN crowd up.
LSU did to Clemson and one of the best DCs in the last 30 years what OSU did to us.
The offense kept them in the game for awhile but it was too much in the end and the stats are gaudy.
That's just where offenses in college football are nowadays.
That game made me feel so much better about Don Brown because he may not be Aranda or Venables, but he's not far off and the numbers prove that.
But no one is safe from getting absolutely TORCHED. LSU's defense was giving up HUGE numbers earlier in the year.
Don Brown isn't the problem. The problem is we don't have enough DUDES!
Michigan would've had what...3 guys play in that game on offense or defense last night?
The next 2 top picks in the draft were in that game. We haven't seen an Etinenne since when? Chase, Jefferson, Higgins and Rogers...all beasts on the outside. Don't get me started on Simmons.
Michigan's goal should be "Rose Bowl/NY6 Bowl." Maybe an odd year like ND had last year to earn the right to get SMOKED by one of these teams. But we are not close to Clemson, Bama, Georgia, Oklahoma, LSU and Ohio St.
...but newsflash for everyone who bitches and moans about that fact. NO ONE ELSE IS EITHER!
Michigan just needs to focus on being the Leaders and Best...of the rest.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:18 AM ^
I actually agree 100% with your sentiments. But I'm here to remind you that it won't mollify the FIRE DON BROWN crowd after our next loss to a high-powered offense.
January 16th, 2020 at 1:52 PM ^
It might help if we have some more DT depth though. Who's responsible for that not happening? It ain't the players.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:43 AM ^
I mostly agree, except I'll differ in thinking that we're 'that' far off. I don't think we are. Some things need to be cleaned up - game management, preparation, some position personnel, but we aren't that far off talent-wise. I think the new offense, with Gattis, is finally something that can compete and be improved on/tweaked as needed (unlike the DrevPep-ffense). It is also complicit with everything the death stars are doing on offense (ie: getting the ball to the playmakers, regardless of where they are on the field).
If the Gattisffense continues to improve like it did last year, and DCaff/Milton are a QB upgrade, DB's defense is plenty good enough to get us in the competitive range. Can we win? I dunno, but we'd be more competitive than ever before.
If the offense scores 35, you're in the game. If it doesn't, you get blasted back home. Ask Clemson about that...
January 14th, 2020 at 11:00 AM ^
talent wise UM is still a ways off from the playoff teams and Alabama, take WR, people love to talk about Michigan's WR, but they don't have the playmakers that these guys do, they're half as productive as the best WRs on LSU, Ala etc. and face it, not half as good as Braylon Edwards. Defensively, the team is a little closer, but again Clemson has done a lot better vs OSU than UM has wrt defense.
January 14th, 2020 at 1:24 PM ^
The problem with our last two games had a lot more to do with our Gattisffense crawling in a hole and dying in the second half than anything else.
If it was Patterson we'll find out next year. If it was Gattis, I do hope he learns better how to adjust in-game. Maybe move back up to the box now that the O is running better.
January 14th, 2020 at 1:58 PM ^
1VaBlue1 - that is exactly my point.
You've listed a bunch of things that "IF" they happen, we "CAN" win.
That's what I'm saying, we have to recalibrate to understand that more times than not these things won't happen. And like I said, in the odd year that they do...we'll find ourselves in the playoff for the right to get our ass kicked by one of the elite teams.
Just like Notre Dame last year. Notre Dame was not even close to the level of most of the elite teams, but their "IFs" aligned just right and they got in. And then got blown off the face of the earth.
If we're in the next tier with Oregon, Florida, etc...that's a NY6 Bowl, that's a possible Rose Bowl. That's where the program is right now.
Go get 4 top 5 recruiting classes in a row and that will change. We need Gary, Winovich, Martin, Hurst, Bush, Peppers, Lewis and the Hill's (2 bros. + Dax) all on the same team! When you get something a long those lines, I'm willing to bet you're in the playoff. 1, maybe 2 per year isn't going to cut it.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:44 AM ^
Brown wants a positionless DL... but the problem with that is short yardage, and/or big run teams like Wisconsin, because we have no true DT. I'd like to know, with Nua, how we aren't in on a few polynesian DTs...
January 14th, 2020 at 11:03 AM ^
We are.
January 14th, 2020 at 11:06 AM ^
Don Brown is a good DC, but my problem with him is the fact that his defenses get burned by the same type of plays game to game (see Indiana/Ohio State 2018), and year in year out (see Penn State/Ohio State/Wisconsin). Also, the consistent lack of discipline his players have shown over the past two years, committing drive extending penalties and/or breakdowns in called defenses has put the team behind the eight-ball too many times.
Something is off when a coach can't get his players to buy in to disciplined football and when the coach is too stubborn to make adjustments for his defenses weaknesses.
January 14th, 2020 at 1:25 PM ^
Here's what Baumgardner had to say about where Michigan needs to go:
His defenses have ranked No. 1, No. 3, No. 2 and No. 8 nationally in total yards allowed per game, respectively. Brown’s defenses have, whether you want to admit it or not, always been pretty organized.
I get asked a lot about why Michigan, at the very least, can’t be like Auburn when it comes to the Ohio State rivalry. Gus Malzahn won his third Iron Bowl on Saturday. Not because his defense shut Alabama down (the Tide had 515 yards), but because his team found a way to score 48 points.
Michigan has to close a talent gap, yes. But Michigan also needs to be a more disciplined, more consistent football team overall. You don’t get to make all those mistakes in a massive game like that and then simply shrug and claim talent is the only issue at hand when you get blown out (Michigan didn’t claim this, by the way, these are my words). Michigan had what it needed on this roster to be 10-1 or 11-0 heading into Saturday’s game against Ohio State. Those losses happened. And they didn’t happen because of a talent gap. They happened, in part, because Michigan’s year-round process of preparation cannot suffer any setbacks or misses. Those are also contributors to pushing one’s self from good to great.
January 14th, 2020 at 2:12 PM ^
I see this and the Auburn comparison is a good one. That said, Auburn wants to fire Malzahn every year...do we really think if we get that yard and beat OSU in OT that it would've silenced everyone today? I don't.
Auburn wants to be ELITE just like Michigan does, fact is...both are in that next tier. Both teams need better QB play and better talent overall to get over the hump.
That's why I think the first goal is just to be the best of the rest. We shouldn't be getting blown out by Wisconsin and Penn St. - now THAT is bullshit. We can certainly lose to them on any given day, but we should be a slight notch ahead. We're not.
Getting blown out by UF, same thing. If McCaffrey/Milton aren't the QB we need, it's going to have to be McCarthy.
But it's more than just the QB...we have a bunch of great #2 RBs, Mayfield is very good backup right now. Same with Dwumfour and Kemp. McGrone played well, but he should be a backup and the next star in the making. Hawkins is a backup. Our CB situation behind Hill/Thomas aren't even backups, those are like walk-ons at these elite programs. Our depth is HORRIBLE compared to those top teams.
January 14th, 2020 at 2:57 PM ^
Clemson's recruiting classes aren't top 5 yet they've gotten to the NCG 3 out of the last 4 years. UM can't stack 4* recruits like Bama, not many can, but they can do more with what they have, like Clemson has. They can make incremental changes that Baumgardner was talking about that result in exponential returns. Minimizing things like clock management errors and ball control issues as a couple of examples.
Yes we got blown out by UW but not by PSU, not sure what you're referring to there (2017?). The first few games of 2019 were the function of lot of negative things on offense like Shea's injury and a new offensive scheme learning curve. Urban talked about how the transition takes about 6 games before it starts to click in. Once it does the offense will take off, and we saw evidence of that.
The UF loss after the 2018 season was due to players sitting out and the hangover from the OSU loss more than anything else.
I am hopeful that with Patterson gone we can get back to really seeing what our pool of QB talent can do. I'm not convinced that none of these highly recruited and rated recruits is not good enough, given time under center, to eventually be an improvement over last years QB play.
January 14th, 2020 at 8:22 PM ^
Clemson’s average rating blows UM’s out of the water 2016-2020. They are recruiting at an ELITE level despite taking some smaller classes that led to more Top 10-15 classes a couple of years.
Further, Harbaugh’s “Top Five” 2017 class has lost 1/2 of its signees. The ones that are left aren’t exactly murderer’s row of future All-American’s.
In short, Clemson recruits at a higher level than UM, has landed and developed elite QBs, and Dabo’s players respond to him and his staff. This is where the hardware comes from.
It doesn’t hurt they play in a weak ACC which means they can not play their best at times and still get to the dance. They beat an 8-5 TA&M by only 14 and barely avoided disaster against 7-6 North Carolina. And again, it doesn’t hurt they have had their two best QB’s of all-time during this championship era.
January 15th, 2020 at 9:20 AM ^
Per 247's Talent Composite Clemson's average recruit talent rank over the last 5 years is 11. Very good average but is it Elite?
Bama's average for the same time period is 1.2, Georgia 4.4, LSU 5.2, OSU 2.6.
Michigan's average over the same time period was 8.6.
I'd guess anything at 5 and below is probably elite but that's up for debate.
https://247sports.com/Season/2015-Football/CollegeTeamTalentComposite/
January 14th, 2020 at 10:24 AM ^
Don Brown would've given up 1,000 at least.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:50 AM ^
Both choose to wear sweaters.
The guy with the thinner sweater would've been colder.
Both would've froze though.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:27 AM ^
They tried to match speed with LSU but they just didn't have the athletes to compete with that buzzsaw.
Overall Clemson does what Don Brown tries to do - play tight man and try to overwhelm you with blitz packages.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:33 AM ^
After 628 yards I would say it is more accurate to say Clemson tries to do what don brown tries to do. Both were just trying.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:33 AM ^
I mean if i didnt know better I'd swear that......and stay with me on this point cause it's a bit of a reach at first....that superior athletes matter. That no matter how good the scheme, no matter how sound the coaching, great players will usually beat good players for some wacky reason.
There arent even performance enhancing drugs in all of East Lansing to get Clemson's players equal to LSU's.
#recruitingmatters
January 14th, 2020 at 9:38 AM ^
Just for the record, those "superior recruits" for LSU- Jefferson was a 3* ranked outside of the top 2000. Edwards-Helaire and Moss were both 3*. Burrow was a 4*, but ranked lower overall than Gentry as a QB. Chase was a top 100 recruit, but not as highly ranked as DPJ.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:45 AM ^
I'm not a Justin Jefferson hipster since he played at Destrehan in Louisiana, but somebody at the recruiting sites missed badly on him. I went back and watched his high school film a couple months ago when he was dominating the SEC, and there's no excuse for his being ranked so low.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:28 AM ^
Which of course begs the question after acknowledging that recruiting matters: Is the Michigan staff missing on the highly rated recruits themselves or just not developing them?
January 14th, 2020 at 12:37 PM ^
yes (lower case) and YES (upper case). Recruiting in general, and player development moreso, keeps this team as a #12-18 program.
Hopefully, player utillization will continue to improve in the new offense, but development is clearly lacking.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:57 AM ^
Simmons and skalski and muse were 3 stars. The safety was an unranked recruit, who for other reasons was offered by Clemson. That's 4 key spots with less than top tier talent on that defense. To see how they stopped Ohio state still surprises me.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:32 AM ^
OSU stopped themselves, and Urban pretty much blamed Day after the game. The big thing in the OSU game was J.K Dobbins getting injured when that offense was rolling, and losing Wade to that targeting penalty.
January 14th, 2020 at 12:25 PM ^
And Dobbins dropped two certain TD passes.
January 14th, 2020 at 6:48 PM ^
Uh...wtf?
Isaiah Simmons is not a top tier talent?
He's going to be a 1st rounder. He's the type of player Michigan needs. If Don Brown could clone him 7 times, he would and play him on the back end of a 4-2-5. (So Simmons would occupy the entire back 7.)
January 14th, 2020 at 2:11 PM ^
How does that explain Clemson beating Bama in 2016 and 2018??
January 14th, 2020 at 9:33 AM ^
Venable is not a good DC because his defense gave up 42 points.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:43 AM ^
Venables should be fired, and they should hire Yaklich
January 14th, 2020 at 9:46 AM ^
I know you are being sarcastic because he is one of the best in the game but it should have been closer to 60. LSU's receiver Chase dropped a for sure touchdown on a beautiful pass from Burrow. They also let off the gas their last couple of drives and took a couple knees inside the 5 yard line to end the game. And they missed a field goal.
January 14th, 2020 at 11:10 AM ^
They wish they had Don Brown.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:35 AM ^
LSU will go down as one of the best teams of all time. Clemson just wasn't quite as good, but they threw everything they had at them.
Stop looking at yards and look at points. LSU would have scored 70 on us because we don't force any field goals.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:45 AM ^
LSU would have scored 70 on us because we don't force any field goals.
...neither did Clemson.
(edit: as correctly pointed out below, LSU did attempt (and miss) one field goal)
January 14th, 2020 at 9:56 AM ^
I should have said "or punts". How many times did OSU punt against us? Once?
Also they did force them to a field goal and they missed.
January 14th, 2020 at 10:12 AM ^
You're right, they did attempt a FG. I forgot about that.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:36 AM ^
It felt like Clemson played really good defense that's just how prolific and historic this LSU offense is this year. I mean think about this in 15 games Joe burrow threw 60 flipping touchdown passes which equals literally 4 a game not to mention six rushing touchdowns and they had a thousand yard back. Nobody was stopping that offense this year no matter what they did
January 14th, 2020 at 9:40 AM ^
Schemes aside, Clemson D sucked at wrapping up. So many broken tackles and players just tossing their bodies at LSU players. LSU skill players just seemed more physical.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:43 AM ^
It seemed to me like they came out in the second half with the intention to blitz more.
I'm just not sure how you can beat an accurate QB with multiple wide receivers that can take the game over and put up over 150 yards on you. It's pretty clear that Clemson didn't have that much success on defense, but basically no one did all year. Closest was Auburn and they still had 500 yards put on them by LSU. The difference is they got 2 turnovers to Clemson's 0. Also the LSU offense got better as the year went on.
The bigger issue for Clemson was on offense. If you were going to beat LSU this year it was going to be by a score of 45-42, but Lawrence looked very human and completed fewer than 1/2 his passes for only 6.3 yards a pass. Just not good enough.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:47 AM ^
They certainly brought more pressure to start the 2nd half and it was working.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:48 AM ^
The only way I think LSU's offense could be beat is with a truly dominant defensive line. You'd have to get pressure on Burrow quickly and consistently, snap after snap. Clemson couldn't do that.
January 14th, 2020 at 2:13 PM ^
I agree - and I think it's because they thought Burrow was injured. They were looking to either exploit his injury or knock him out of the game.
He took a huge hit at the end of the first half, and was clearly wincing, and spent most of halftime riding a bike.
Give Burrow a ton of credit for not only gutting it out, but keeping his focus. Incredible performance.
January 14th, 2020 at 9:45 AM ^
I see what you're doing here AND I LIKE IT.
So Venables suddenly got stupid and sucks and FIRE HIM and fire Don Brown again too!
OR...
The rules of football have evolved to totally favor the offense. Don Brown is just fine as our DC.
The ball is squarely in the court of Josh Gattis and our Recruiting Coordinator.
Gentlemen, get cracking.
January 14th, 2020 at 4:27 PM ^
3rd and 19 and he has 11 men at the line of scrimmage....sounds very Don Brownesque!
January 14th, 2020 at 9:46 AM ^
Not surprisingly the better QB (or QB who played better last night) won the game.