How was Clemson's Brent Venables so Prepared for Miami?
ABC play-by-play announcer Chris Folwer noted during the broadcast Saturday night that No. 1 Clemson looked like it had weeks to prepare for Miami.
The final score of 42-17 would back up that argument, and how defensive coordinator Brent Venables drew up a scheme in less than a week that held the high-flying Hurricane attack to 10 offensive points was impressive to his players and on-lookers.
But it didn't happen by chance. Venables revealed Monday that Miami is a team he and his staff has begun studying during the offseason because of COVID-19.
"We just had a lot of meeting time to look at a lot of people," Venables said. "And so they were certainly one of the teams that we tried to do some background work in case we played them."
The Hurricanes weren't an original opponent. Clemson didn't know it was hosting Miami until August when the ACC released a revised 10-game conference schedule with one non-league game added. It just happened that when Miami popped up on the slate, the Tigers weren't caught off guard.
The thing is, this Hurricanes offense is vastly different than a year ago. In the offseason, quarterback D'King transferred from Houston, where he scored 78 combined touchdowns in four seasons with the Cougars. He had seven total touchdowns entering last Saturday.
"We looked at everybody this summer," Venables said. "When we found out we were playing them and we started to look them up, we went back and looked at Houston. We had a group of guys look at D'Eriq King, so we could put a highlight tape together for our guys."
Against Clemson, King had 205 total yards with one rushing score. He threw two interceptions.
Venables' ability to bottle him up came from an aggressive scheme that attacked Miami's overwhelmed offensive front and allowed the Tigers to hold the offensive coordinator Rhett Lashley's Hurricanes to just 210 total yards.
"Certainly knowing the background of Coach Lashley and had been with (Auburn) Coach (Gus) Malzahn, there was a little bit of familiarity," Venables said. "We know his work with Mike Leach at Oklahoma, as well and having some air raid principles in the throwing game, as well, but our guys just played clean. That's the biggest thing, played clean and played aggressive and did a good job of communicating and playing fast."
It also helps Venables' preparation and knowledge of stopping offenses that he tries to watch everybody. He said it helps to turn on the TV and catch as much of as many games as possible.
"I'm looking at people we don't play in other conferences," Venables said. "We're looking at other defenses. We're looking at offenses we know other people are copy-cat. Whether you're looking at Ole Miss or whether you're looking at Georiga on defense, you're always trying to find ways. Even if it's like literally less than 10 minutes, 'Hey, let me throw that game on there real quick, introduce them, see what they were doing.' Just try to see what other people are doing out there."
