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Can Clawson Ever Have a Quality D?

skinnydeac said:
It looked like Mustapha jumped and barely got his hands on the ball. I'm not sure if he tries to "bat it down" it would have done anything other than tip it up in the air anyway. He may have miss timed the jump a bit.

Agree on the kick offs. The inability to find a kicker/punter that can kick it far enough for a touchback is kind of impressive. If VMI and Liberty can do it... The Murphy kid has been at Wake in a college weightlifting program for 4 or 5 years and he can't just trot out there and drill them through the back of the endzone once per week? Most decent high school soccer players could do that.
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This is a fair point. He definitely mistimed the jump.

I'm just saying it wasn't a fluky play. A jump ball prayer on fourth down has to be batted down. We had guys there we just didn't execute and they made a better play on the ball than we did.
 
Clawson said we adjusted kicking due to return man he feared. Liberty should have had 20 points max. Not time to turn on the defense,
 
Turd Ferguson said:
This is a fair point. He definitely mistimed the jump.

I'm just saying it wasn't a fluky play. A jump ball prayer on fourth down has to be batted down. We had guys there we just didn't execute and they made a better play on the ball than we did.
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In the postgame, mustapha said he knows he should have batted it down and that he'd learned his lesson
 
skinnydeac said:
It looked like Mustapha jumped and barely got his hands on the ball. I'm not sure if he tries to "bat it down" it would have done anything other than tip it up in the air anyway. He may have miss timed the jump a bit.

Agree on the kick offs. The inability to find a kicker/punter that can kick it far enough for a touchback is kind of impressive. If VMI and Liberty can do it... The Murphy kid has been at Wake in a college weightlifting program for 4 or 5 years and he can't just trot out there and drill them through the back of the endzone once per week? Most decent high school soccer players could do that.
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If Mustapha had made that catch, a game-saving peak of the jump interception in the endzone, it would have been a play of the week nominee. I completely agree that a tip would have been dangerous there.
 
wfumike02 said:
Were you under a rock when we were winning games 3-0?
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This - But I think it's fair to view Saturday as a good bellwether game for this defense.

Brandon Streeter is a HUGE downgrade at OC from Tony Elliott and outside of Will Shipley this Clemson offense doesn't have gobs of NFL talent at the skill positions compared to prior years.

With that said, I believe the 542 yards of total offense (with 332 rushing!!!) and 48 points Clemson hung on Wake last season with a limited (at best) QB was the final nail in Hemphill's coffin.
 
PhDeac said:
If Mustapha had made that catch, a game-saving peak of the jump interception in the endzone, it would have been a play of the week nominee. I completely agree that a tip would have been dangerous there.
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More dangerous than giving up the touchdown? He mistimed it so maybe it’s moot but as Phan pointed out even mustapha said postgame the right thing to do was to bat the ball into the ground. If he had played the ball better the right play was still not an interception on fourth down. That’s a coaching point of emphasis on fourth down.
 
In the position he was in, he probably would have tipped the ball up. What actually happened was a really fluky play where one WR prevented the catch and the other stole the ball.

I guess what I'm saying is attempting to secure the ball while in an awkward jump in a 4th down situation where field position doesn't matter made sense.
 
PhDeac said:
In the position he was in, he probably would have tipped the ball up. What actually happened was a really fluky play where one WR prevented the catch and the other stole the ball.

I guess what I'm saying is attempting to secure the ball while in an awkward jump in a 4th down situation where field position doesn't matter made sense.
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I get you. Either way it’s a defensive miscue we can’t give up on fourth down. And we did four times in one way or another.

A benefit of rewatching that play a few times was seeing 77 hold smenda after the qb got out of the pocket. Liberty was quite effective at holding their blocks without drawing a single holding penalty. I’m not sure it was a huge factor but it cost him a step or two and prevented him from turning. I haven’t rewatched the whole game but from my seats it felt like it happened quite a bit. They sure as shit didn’t have a problem seeing us hold.
 
I'm not sure why we're so bad at drawing holding penalties on opposing OLs. I remember our entire section last year screaming for holds against Louisville (most notably) and State that never materialized. And Liberty definitely was holding almost every single time they got beat (which was often) last Saturday. Zero calls. Saw Clawson going apoplectic (love when he does this) on one blatant miss on an outside run in the 2nd half.
 
My favorite is when we would beat a lineman and he would just let his arm drag across our neck and over the shoulder like it was somehow incidental but clearly intentional.
 
Turd Ferguson said:
More dangerous than giving up the touchdown? He mistimed it so maybe it’s moot but as Phan pointed out even mustapha said postgame the right thing to do was to bat the ball into the ground. If he had played the ball better the right play was still not an interception on fourth down. That’s a coaching point of emphasis on fourth down.
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To me, this is super nitpicky, captain hindsight type criticism. App St just won on a hail mary where the other team batted the ball and it went straight to a WR. A lot of it just comes down to luck. Obviously good to be as situationally aware as possible, but I think there's also an argument to just play fast and instinctively.
 
IAppreciateIt said:
To me, this is super nitpicky, captain hindsight type criticism. App St just won on a hail mary where the other team batted the ball and it went straight to a WR. A lot of it just comes down to luck. Obviously good to be as situationally aware as possible, but I think there's also an argument to just play fast and instinctively.
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I don’t think it’s super picky. And I agreed with ph after watching that m was in a tough spot. But the point remains that it was a prayer throw into double coverage and we didn’t execute. At least the receiver wasn’t wide ass open like the prayer throw on third and forever earlier in the game that also resulted in a TD.
 
tigerswood said:
This game should have been 31-3 at half and a laugher that broke Liberty's spirits with just solid, if unspectacular, play from Sam and the OL. Only thing that concerned me in the 2nd half (and a bit against VMI) was tackling. Scheme seems much better.
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Yeah, I think we haven't even mentioned that Liberty switched QBs for a few series lol. They were terrible for almost the whole first half, only scoring 6 points offensively, with 3 interceptions. Wake scored only 7 points off of three turnovers in the first half.

The first four drives to start the second half was maybe the worst stretch of Wake offensive FB I have seen in several seasons, honestly. The energy and composure looked completely sucked out of the team. There were 7 drives where we could have put this game away through the middle of the 3rd quarter, and we didn't.

The defense absolutely got saggy in the second half, particularly the beginning of it. Even with that, I don't see this game as a defensive failure. They forced a ton of TOs and were great on third down. If you want to say the run defense was terrible in the second half, hard to argue that. Liberty had some extremely good bounces late.

We had stretches of offense that were non-existent. Even the successful drives we had, Sam had quite a few throws balls that were in traffic or way under-thrown. The first Banks TD could have been an INT or PD.

It took a forced fumble/recovery and a huge Morin punt return to score enough. Props to Key and Banks for huge games. Most seasons, this would have been a loss.
 
Fusiondad10 said:
I think the defense is more athletic than ly and overall probably better. But you can't have our offense going 3 and outs in less than a minute or scoring in 2 minutes and putting the defense back on the field time after time. They'll get tired. Our offense going 3 and out is the worst thing for our defense. As far as offense I've said many times that the slow mesh is a "trick" that evens things up for our offensive line. You saw yesterday that we couldn't get a 1-2 yard run when we needed to. It's because our o-line isn't good enough to line up and blow people off the ball. Clawson and Ruggiero know it and that's why the slow mesh is brilliant coaching.
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After 8 years and success, why can't we recruit such lineman that CAN move the line.....like Pitt, NCSU, FSU, Miami, N.D.....?! The slow mesh will not work forever. It sure didn't in the most important game of last season, the ACC title.
 
PhDeac said:
If Mustapha had made that catch, a game-saving peak of the jump interception in the endzone, it would have been a play of the week nominee. I completely agree that a tip would have been dangerous there.
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Yes, especially with that last name. Fun for SC. But got to throw it straight down to the ground there. But all well that ends well.
 
80deacon said:
After 8 years and success, why can't we recruit such lineman that CAN move the line.....like Pitt, NCSU, FSU, Miami, N.D.....?! The slow mesh will not work forever. It sure didn't in the most important game of last season, the ACC title.
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The ACCCG we made, in no small part, because of the offensive game plan that Clawson and Co. created.
 
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