No illusions, Tigers' offense is not perfect

There are no illusions with the Clemson Tigers' coaching staff that, even though they are currently ranked No. 1 in the nation, have put up 600-plus yards of offense on two of their first three opponents and are currently 3-0 on the season, they have yet to play a complete game.

CLEMSON— There are no illusions with the Clemson Tigers' coaching staff that, even though they are currently ranked No. 1 in the nation, have put up 600-plus yards of offense on two of their first three opponents and are currently 3-0 on the season, they have yet to play a complete game.

Meaning: they are focused on getting better.

"It's all about improving... it's not about the outside expectations, the outside noise. From the outside, everybody is going to want this offense to be perfect," co-offensive coordinator Jeff Scott said. "We can't worry about that. We have to worry about playing to our standard, and we haven't quite played to our standard for four quarters. And still have a had a lot of success, so it's encouraging to think about what we can do when we do play to that standard... And we are not far off. It's just a few plays here and there and the consistency. I think that will come."

Even when the inevitable begins to happen and the Tigers begin to click on all cylinders, there will still be room to teach and improve because they understand that being the best team in college football means you get everyone's best shot.

"It's still good early in the year to go in that film room and coach and guys see they have a lot of things to improve," Scott said. "It's good to keep our guys hungry this early. The goal is to get better each week, and even though we haven't gotten to that top ceiling where we want to be, I do feel like we're improving and getting close.

"There's no doubt with the success we've had as a team, everybody has our game circled and we are going to get everybody's best shot. I think early on they did a really good job, a lot of guys around the box and forced us to make some throws. We made some and missed some. The guys we have, we want to hit every single one of them. And we're just not quite there yet this early in the year."

If there has been one area of concern for the Tigers it would be their lack of success on downfield shots.

But with the majority of the media and fan base immediately tuning their questions to quarterback Trevor Lawrence, Scott believes that it is a combination of the quarterback, the wide receivers and, simply, teams showing the Tigers things they were not expecting that has led to a lack of big plays down the field.

"It's a matter of guys seeing it, learning from it," Scott said. "We got some different coverages tonight than we got the first two games. Even though we expect to win all those matchups, we didn't. So there will be guys watching video and learning from some of their releases and going back in practice and focusing on those things."