Key to Clemson’s Defensive Success Against Gamecocks
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CLEMSON, S.C — If No. 8 Clemson wants to beat rival South Carolina for an eighth consecutive year, it cannot play the way Tennessee did on defense.
The 10th-ranked Volunteers had perhaps their worst game of the year on defense at South Carolina. The Gamecocks rolled up a season-high 606 total yards and got six touchdown passes from quarterback Spencer Rattler in a stunning, 63-38, win last Saturday in Columbia, S.C.
The loss knocked Tennessee out of the College Football Playoff discussion, and subsequently put the Tigers back in it. However, if Clemson wants to stay in the conversation, it needs to beat a confident South Carolina team at Memorial Stadium on Saturday.
The key? Don’t play like the Volunteers did.
“They missed several tackles, first of all. They missed some big tackles which led to some big plays,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said when asked about what Tennessee did not do against the Gamecocks. “Coverage issues. I did not think they affected the quarterback. He was very comfortable.”
Clemson (10-1) has done a really good job of doing all of those things the last couple of weeks in routs over Louisville and Miami. In fact, the Tigers have done a relatively good job in each of the last seven games when it comes to affecting the quarterback.
In five of those seven games, Clemson has held its opponent below 50 percent passing completion. No one in those seven games has thrown for more than 254 yards and three opponents were held under 200 yards and two others were held under 100.
Since the Tigers allowed Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman to average 11.6 yards per attempt back on Sept. 24, the opposition is averaging just 5.6 yards per attempt and 184.1 yards per game.
However, Rattler is perhaps the most talented quarterback Clemson has faced all year. He showed off that talent last week when he completed 30 of 37 passes for 438 yards, six touchdowns and no interceptions.
It was the best game of Rattler’s South Carolina career, by far, and his best since his redshirt freshman season at Oklahoma in 2020.
But there was a key to his success against the Volunteers.
“He had a lot of time on a lot of plays to get comfortable,” Swinney said.
Clemson, which has recorded 15 of its 32 sacks in the last four games, including nine the last two weeks, will do its best to make Rattler uncomfortable. Then the secondary has to do what it has been doing the last seven weeks.
They have to make competitive plays, which again, Tennessee did not do.
“They did not make the competitive plays,” Swinney said. “It seemed like every competitive play…they were in position to make the play. They did not make it.”
Can Clemson’s defense make those plays this week?
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