Adjustment period

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For the last 30 games over two seasons, Clemson fans had legitimate reason to be supremely confident of a victory every single time the Tigers took the field.

That is a rare and possibly unprecedented happening in this football program's history. And the reason, of course, was the presence of a rare and probably unprecedented talent at the controls of the offense.

Deshaun Watson's arrival was a game-changer, and thus his departure will be. You just don't lose that type of player, that type of performer with everything at stake, without having to do some adjusting.

That said, maybe we're all in need of more perspective as we evaluate the dominant storyline of the 2017 offseason. While it will be impossible to avoid comparisons with Watson as we watch his successor(s), there is another layer to this topic that we're probably not thinking about and talking about enough.