Cervenka is ready to go against the Aggies

CLEMSON — An offensive lineman is the unsung hero of any offense. In fact, according to Clemson offensive line coach Robbie Caldwell, "The only time you know the name of one of my guys is when they do something wrong."

But that is not entirely the case for the Clemson Tigers, who boast one of the best offensive lines in the nation.

According to ESPN, the 2019 Tigers boast the third-best offensive line in the nation — even after losing four-year starter Mitch Hyatt to the NFL.

Part of the success of the Tigers' offensive line can be attributed to the hard work put in during the offseason, especially for starting right guard Gage Cervenka — whose workhorse attitude in the gym is paying dividends on the field

“Just going from last year, I’ve (set a personal best) on bench, gone up on my rep max, and gone up in squats," Cervenka said. "I take that very seriously because it’s a huge aspect of this game and is just something that I love to do. Just getting in that weight room and doing everything that I can to better myself is just something that I strive to. I try to push myself because I know that if I push myself then I’m going to kind of help bring those guys behind me up.

"In the weight room, just as an offensive line, we have so many guys who have gotten so much stronger, so it’s just something that we strive to do.”

In the Tigers' opening game of the 2019 season, a 52-14 win over the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, the Tiger offensive line had their way with the Yellow Jackets.

For the game, the Tigers rushed for 411 yards, the most in a season-opener since 1957 and the most allowed by Georgia Tech since 1975. But while that number was 100 yards more than their unit's goal, it is the competition among the offensive line that drives their success.

“We always strive to get as many rushing yards as we can," Cervenka said. "We always have a goal and I think as an offense we have 200 yards, but we shoot for 300 as an offensive line and then anything above that, we just keep going up between the game. We have a little friendly competition between all of us. We’ll go out there and I’ll mess with the guys and say, ‘hey, I’m setting the goal, I’m going to get at least five knockdowns this game.’ So, then I’ll get guys like John [Simpson], Tremayne [Anchrum], and Sean [Pollard] and see how many they can get, and we’ll try to one-up each other. There’s just a lot of competition between us.”

Even though they were impressive in their opener, they were far from perfect.

"There were a lot of good things in the game. I was disappointed with the turnovers and penalties for sure but outside of that a pretty clean first game," Swinney said. "But offensively I thought assignment wise we were in a good place. I saw a lot of good things from a lot of guys. Again the penalties were something that we have to clean up."

Cervenka believes that correcting the issues that caused the uncharacteristic penalties will not be a problem, as it was more to do with knocking the rust off.

“I guess there was just a little rust on there, being slow with our feet and our hands weren’t as tight as they needed to be, so just little technique things," Cervenka said. "At the end of the first half when we went back to the locker room, we were just kind of like ‘hey, we need to tighten this up and fix this’, so just easy things. It’s nothing like, ‘oh gosh, how can we fix this?’ We know how to do it. There are some things we just need to talk about, communicate on, maybe change the snap counts, and things like that.”

The Tigers will need to make sure that they are sharp this week, as they welcome the 11th-ranked Texas A&M Aggies to Death Valley in what many around the nation have billed as one of the biggest nonconference games of the entire season.

“They are well-coached, have some big players and are physical," Cervenka said. "It’s going to be a tough match and last year we left a little bit out there, so I just feel like this is going to be a very dominant match that we need to come out and dominate in the trenches. This is a game last year where I only got to play one snap, so this game and opponent is kind of new to me and I’m very eager and excited to get out there and play them.”

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