Clemson Believes 'Full Potential' Can Still Be Reached

Despite coming away with the 29-23 victory and advancing to the national title game, No. 3 Clemson doesn't feel like it played its best game against Ohio State. Swinney and company look to fix mistakes against No. 1 LSU on Monday night.

You can make an argument that No. 1 LSU played its best game of the season in the Peach Bowl win over Oklahoma.

The SEC Tigers scored 49 of their 63 points in the first half and held the Sooners' high-scoring offense to 15 points below their season average.

LSU quarterback Joe Burrow threw for 493 yards and an astounding seven touchdowns. His 12.6 yards per attempt was his highest average per throw since he hit a season-high 15.5 against Northwestern State in Week 3.

The game never seemed in doubt.

That certainly wasn’t the case for No. 3 Clemson, which trailed 16-0 in the second quarter and needed a 4-play, 94-yard touchdown drive and a two-point conversion with 1:49 to play, followed by a Nolan Turner interception in the Clemson end zone, to seal the 29-23 victory over Ohio State.

After advancing in the semifinal to face LSU on Monday night in the national championship game, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said he’d “literally give us a B-.”

“But the beautiful thing about that is we still won the game,” Swinney added. “We can take some confidence in that. We made a lot of mistakes and did some dumb things. We’ll have to play much better in this next one to have chance to beat these guys.”

He isn’t the only one saying that. Clemson’s players believe they were far from perfect against the Buckeyes.

“We didn’t play great, especially the first half,” Lawrence said. “We didn’t play clean, just the little stuff, but when we really needed it we made the plays.”

Against a team some experts believed was the most complete team in the nation, Clemson’s offense totaled 76 yards below their season average. Coming into the game, it’s a unit that was recording 7.5 yards per play, but it averaged 6.7 against Ohio State.

Lawrence was the team’s leading rusher, not Etienne. Etienne was the team’s leading receiver, not Tee Higgins or Justyn Ross, a pair of receivers who both left the game at times with injuries.

“No matter how it’s gone the whole game, when you need the plays you’ve got to make them,” said Lawrence, who was held to his lowest yards per pass attempt (7.8) since Oct. 12. “I think that’s what we did really well in the game.”

On the other side of the ball, Clemson allowed 516 yards, the highest total given up this season by the nation’s top total defense.

It marked just the second time all year a team went over 300 total yards against the Tigers. OSU QB Justin Fields threw for 320 passing yards, but he turned the ball over twice on interceptions, giving Clemson another win in the turnover margin.

“I think we did a good enough job to win the game,” Turner said. “We had to go back and make a lot of corrections this week. We had to watch the tape and make corrections and changes and see what was wrong. We’re going to get that fixed for this week coming up.”

LSU coasted in its semifinal. Clemson won a dogfight. Will it matter in the biggest game of the season? Who knows, but Clemson hopes it's saved the best for last.

“We could’ve played better,” Lawrence said. “You can’t play perfect, but definitely, I don’t think you’ve seen our full potential. We haven’t played as good as we can play. We’ve had games where we played really well, but there’s always more. We’re looking at all the little details, especially against Ohio State, we could’ve done better, cleaning those up. Definitely, there’s more to be done.”