Tag: Garrett Riley

Heading into this season, Clemson fans had high hopes for the Tigers’ offense with the addition of 2022 Broyles Award winner Garrett Riley.

At TCU last season, Riley had the Horned Frog’s offense humming as they made a shocking run to the National Championship. Expectations were vast with what we saw from the TCU offense last season, the move over to Clemson with the talent on this roster. 

Through six weeks, those expectations have not been met. In all honesty, they haven’t been close to met. 

During head coach Dabo Swinney’s call-in show on Monday, Swinney was asked if there was a leash on Riley and this offense. According to Swinney, Riley ‘doesn’t have a leash on him.’

“He’s not on a short leash, for sure. I think you’ve got a combination,” Swinney said. “First of all, you’re playing different teams. We’ve played some pretty good teams. Duke’s a good team. Florida State is pretty good. Syracuse was a Top 10 defense in the country, scoring defense, going up there at their place. We played some teams that we put up a ton of offense in several games, outside of this past one here. He’s done a heck of a job. And he’s got a young quarterback. Last year, the quarterback he had was a fifth or sixth-year player, so he’s got a young guy and had a couple guys out as well, but he’s done a heck of a job. Again, almost 500 yards against Duke, and we got beat. Outgained Florida State by 100-something yards, but we got beat.

“It’s been more turnover issues, and he’s put us in position to win every single game. That’s for sure. Not that he’s perfect or can’t do some things better — that’s not what I mean. You’ve got to give the opponent some credit as well. He’s done a heck of a job and settled in, and he doesn’t have a leash on him, that’s for sure.”

The turnovers have been a serious issue for this team, but the problems are deeper than that. Like last season, situational play-calling has been somewhat confusing. 

The RPO/QB option plays, for example… there are situations where we’re being told that the coaching staff needs to do a better job with starting quarterback Cade Klubnik in those situations. Rather than that, why not just run the ball instead of having that option? I find it hard to believe that there isn’t a single designed run call for those situations. 

Sometimes, the simple thing to do is correct thing to do, but this offense looks like it is overcomplicating things. 

There is a lot of work this offense needs to do, and luckily for the Tigers, Week 7 is their bye week. Hopefully, we will see a new look Clemson offense in Week 8 when they travel to face Miami.

Heading into this season, Dabo Swinney mentioned that this is the fastest team he has had at Clemson. 

Fans were excited by this news, but we haven’t seen that translate onto the field for six weeks. During Swinney’s radio show Monday night, a fan asked why we aren’t seeing this on the field, mentioning how it feels like the offense is “playing with a lid on it.” 

According to Swinney, this all comes down to style of play. In some situations, the lid will be on; in others, the offense is more free. 

“It’s style of play. We’ve played two teams where there was a lid on it,” Swinney said. “If you’ve studied the Duke game and you studied this past week, they played with a lid. So, you have to move the ball, and we were certainly able to do that. I think we’re 17th in the country in plays of 10-plus yards. I mean, to get plays of 20-plus yards, it’s style of play. What happened at Syracuse? Big plays left and right because of their style of play. They played a lot of tight coverage, a lot of man, and so there was no way they were going to let us run the ball. They’re like, ‘You’re not running the ball.’ Very early in the game, in the first quarter, we’re like, ‘We’re going to have to get the ball (down the field),’ and so what’d we do? We went up and down the field and big-played them and had some huge, huge plays down the field.

“The Duke game, it’s 15-play drives. We had almost 500 yards against Duke, but their philosophy was, ‘we’re going to make them finish drives,’ and we had two first-and-goals on the 1, and we didn’t finish. We had two blocked kicks, and we had a lot of stats and a lot of yards, but we didn’t finish. And then this past week, they came in, and that was their philosophy – they said, ‘We’re going to stay on top of everything, and we’re going to make you run the ball,’ and so we did. So, it’s just kind of style of play. A lot of that dictates that.”

Breaking things down further, Swinney addressed the specifics of the Wake Forest game. The Tigers’ took what was given to them by the Demon Deacons defense, and you can’t force things for the sake of forcing them. 

“That’s why they’re playing drop 8, to force you to have to see if you can run the ball and see if you got patience and see if you can complete the drives with underneath stuff, and that’s really kind of what happened (vs. Wake Forest),” Swinney said. “There were a couple of opportunities where we might could’ve made a play or two. Like, we had a big fourth-down conversion. They went Cover 0, and we had a big conversion there with Beaux (Collins), and we missed a couple of opportunities. We missed two down the seams.”

It’s understandable, but what the Demon Deacons defense was giving them clearly wasn’t working as well. It is an interesting situation where I get what Swinney is talking about, but I also understand what I saw. This offense did not look good against Wake Forest.

Even so, Swinney believes we’ve seen good things from this offense through six weeks. 

“We’ve outgained every opponent that we’ve played,” Swinney said. “We’ve been pretty dang good on third down. We had two big drops the other day, otherwise, we would’ve been over 50 percent again. So, there’s been a lot of good things. But when you say ‘put a lid on it’ – it’s style of play, who you’re playing. You’re going to throw a bunch of interceptions if you’re throwing it into a bunch of 2 Robber (coverage). You’re trying to throw the ball down the field, it’s not very smart. So, we’re trying to win. So, when we’ve had opportunities, we’ve made some plays.”

The Week 7 bye will give this team an excellent opportunity to clean things up on the offensive side of the ball.

When the Clemson football program announced the addition of 2022 Broyles Award winner Garrett Riley as the Tigers’ new offensive coordinator, expectations were sky-high as fans were thrilled to have some new ideas and play-calling on the offense.

Clemson’s offense has not looked great in six games this season, leaving fans shocked and confused with what they have seen. Starting quarterback Cade Klubnik and the Tigers’ have had their moments, flashing a high ceiling. Still, inconsistency has left this offense looking like it is holding back an elite defense.

Riley met with the media on Monday, discussing the inconsistency we’ve seen from this offense.

“Big picture is we’ve just been inconsistent too much,” the offensive coordinator said. “Especially with the other day’s performance (vs. Wake Forest), I just feel like we’re too inconsistent, and that’s probably the biggest thing. So, a perfect time to have a bye week for us, kind of recalibrate, regroup, get some guys back, all that sort of thing. So, I just think it’s coming at a good time for us. Really hone in on those things and kind of tighten it up is our big focus going into the bye week.”

Agreed here, the bye week couldn’t have come at a better time for this offense. It seemed this unit was getting better by the week, but the narrow 17-12 win over Wake Forest was a rude awakening. 

Discussing the inconsistency led to an interesting question for Riley… why does this Clemson offense doesn’t look like the TCU offense from last season. According to Riley, it is the same offense, but with different personnel come different looks. 

“Every offense is different,” Riley said. “I mean, you’ve got different players, and you’ve got a younger quarterback, all those things. But we’re attacking a lot of the same ways. Not a lot of difference there, I would say. Just who we have and who we are right now, and just trying to work through it. The last few games, getting off to a faster start, I think, would allow us to probably unhook the plow almost a little bit sooner, right.”

Visually, this offense hasn’t looked much like TCU’s from last season, from my perspective, but it is tough to argue against the guy who is calling the plays.