During ESPN’s broadcast of last Saturday’s game between Clemson and NC State, color commentator Robert Griffin III called Clemson’s play-calling “archaic” when discussing the Tigers’ offense, which tallied only 214 yards, 10 first downs and had seven three-and-outs in the 27-21, double-overtime loss to the Wolfpack in Raleigh.
“Once again straight-stem routes, nobody is getting mesh points or easy pick plays. Where is the creativity?” Griffin III said during the broadcast.
“Seems like they do not only have an identity but their offensive play-calling is a little archaic.”
On Monday, Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott was asked about the “archaic” comment from Griffin III and gave his response to it.
“The response I would have to ‘archaic’ is it’s the same plays that they’re running at North Carolina,” Elliott said. “It’s the same plays that are being run all around the country — we’re just not having success, we’re not executing at a high level. So, there’s going to be critics. It comes with the territory. We’ve just got to do a better job of executing the plays. When you execute the plays, you have success, you score points, then it’s not questioned as much. So, that would just be my response to that.”
A few weeks ago, after Clemson’s season-opening loss to Georgia, Elliott talked about seeing messages from passionate Tiger fans on social media and said he had “Twitter fingers sending me hate mail, telling me that I suck, that I need to be fired, that I need to go back to Michelin and things of that nature.”
On Monday, Elliott was asked if those “Twitter fingers” are getting at him again following the loss to NC State.
“You know what, I shut my social media off and I’m not even worried about it,” Elliott said. “I’m sure they are. I get a lot of text messages from friends just encouraging me, but I hadn’t seen anything. But it is what it is. It’s part of it. It comes with the nature of the position. So, that’s kind of their space, and I’m going to let them have their space.”
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