What Went Wrong During Clemson's Season Opening Loss Against LSU

There were a lot of errors throughout Clemson's devastating loss to LSU, but here are three of the main factors that led to it.

Clemson HC Dabo Swinney suffered the worst loss of his 18-year head coaching career on Saturday night. Here's what went wrong. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

BATON ROUGE, La.: After a two-hour weather delay caused by severe rain and lightning, which moved the kickoff time from 7:30 p.m. EST to 9:40 p.m., Clemson and LSU finally got the chance to face off.

While Clemson began the matchup with a 3-0 lead after an interception by cornerback Ashton Hampton that led to a Nolan Hauser field goal, head coach Lane Kiffin and the Tigers quickly took away all the momentum and solidified a 51-10 blowout win at home.

That said, we will go over three primary aspects that led to the Tigers' worst loss under head coach Dabo Swinney.

Struggles at the Line of Scrimmage

It all starts up front in the sport of football, and that was on full display Saturday evening, as both the offensive and defensive lines struggled heavily through four quarters of play.

While there's a lot to talk about, we'll dumb it down to just two reasons for both sides of the ball, as there's a lot of overlap regarding what went wrong.

One of the main problems for the offensive line was simply a lack of experience. To put into perspective just how youthful the starters were, outside of center Harris Sewell, the other four starters have combined for just seven career starts, with four of those coming from sophomore Brayden Jacobs last season. Not to mention, redshirt freshman Easton Ware has never even played a snap of college football, let alone started.

The physicality aspect also played a factor as they were dominated by star edge rusher Princewill Umanmielen, who totaled 1.5 sacks. It wasn't just him, either, as three other opposing linemen posted at least half of a sack.

These two problems led the Tigers' offense to total a measly 40 rushing yards on 26 carries in addition to four sacks allowed.

Those same two factors showed up on the other side of the ball, too, just with a few small differences.

When speaking about experience, Clemson defensive ends Jahiem Lawson and Will Heldt were expected to step up against LSU's Jordan Seaton and Weston Davis; however, the seniors crumbled, combining for just six tackles, with one for a loss. On the interior, it was a different but similar story. Sophomore Amare Adams and JUCO transfer Andy Burburija made their first career starts at the FBS level, and to put it simply, both struggled.

Alike the offense, the statistics allowed by the defensive line were jaw-dropping, as they gave up 309 rushing yards on 58 carries, with quarterback Sam Leavitt and running back Dilin Jones rushing for 113 yards and two touchdowns apiece.

"You're not going to win if you can't stop the run," Swinney said. "And we didn't, and in particular, set the edge. We just did a really poor job of setting the edge, especially versus the stretch and then the quarterback run, which really killed us on third down."

Poor Quarterback Play

Entering this season, Clemson's quarterback situation was one of the biggest question marks in all of College Football. Cade Klubnik departed for the NFL after four years with the program, leaving redshirt junior Christopher Vizzina the opportunity to take over as a starter.

While there was a position battle between him and true freshman Tait Reynolds throughout the spring and summer period, Vizzina ultimately pulled away with the starting job during the back half of fall camp.

The former four-star recruit received mixed opinions from fans and analysts. Some pointed to his only career start against SMU, where he threw for over 300 yards and three touchdowns, as a positive. Others, however, pointed out that the Mustangs boasted one of the worst passing defenses in the country and felt it was a fluke.

Now, after completing 10-of-16 passes for 83 yards and a pick-six, and getting benched at the end of the second quarter, head coach Dabo Swinney isn't even sure if he'll start next week.

"I don't know," he said when asked about the situation. "I mean, we got to watch the tape and evaluate, and we'll go from there."

Swinney also still thinks the two signal callers are on equal footing.

"That's what I said coming into it," he stated. That's why I said, you know, it was like we didn't want to like guarantee that he was going to play, but it was pretty likely he was going to play, and so we needed to go play games. Again, I wish we had, you know, a game or two where you got to go work the kinks out, but that's not the stick we drew, right?"

Stagnant Offense

One of the clearest issues was how stagnant rehired offensive coordinator Chad Morris' offense was, and while it's not all on one player or staffer, you just can't win games when you go 1-for-13 — and 0-for-8 in the first half — on third down while totaling eight first downs, with seven of those coming in the second half during garbage-time. In fact, Clemson has just one drive extend further than five plays, which was the final drive of the game in garbage-time.

Not to mention, they couldn't stop LSU's offense, which racked up 21 first downs in the first half alone and went 11-of-16 on total third-down conversions.

"[When] you go 11-for-15 or whatever it was on third down," he credited to LSU's win. "You know, too many short yardages. I don't know how many third-and-ones they had. There was a bunch of those that they converted. We had a lot of second and longs where they were able to pop some runs on us and some quarterback draws. Their quarterback rushed for 113 yards, so we just didn't do a good job infecting or containing him at all."

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