BUZZ CUT
FROM THE TIGER FAN SHOP: Click HERE for more in-season DEALS on officially-licensed CLEMSON apparel and gear!
Dabo Swinney brought the triple-option back to Georgia Tech on Saturday.
Halfway through the second quarter, the offense was at Tech's 1-yard line and on trotted out Nyles Pinckney and Bryan Bresee.
Join Tigerillustrated.com subscribers on The West Zone message board!
Pinckney was the dive man, Bresee the pitch. And of course Trevor Lawrence was the under-center distributor.
Maybe the head man had a sense of history and humor after he spent all those years trying to stop Paul Johnson's flexbone offense.
ALSO SEE: Clemson's verbal commitments
Or maybe he just had a sense of going for the kill shot in the second quarter, when Clemson turned a somewhat tenuous affair into an absolute massacre with five touchdowns over that 15 minutes.
Pinckney's jumbo-package touchdown off the dive was part of the orange haze that saturated Tech's end zone Saturday as Clemson improved to 5-0 with a 73-7 walk in the park on a beautiful afternoon.
Swinney has a firm appreciation of misery that can be inflicted on Clemson teams at Georgia Tech. Everything felt sinfully easy on his first visit, a 39-3 aerial assault in his first year as the Tigers' receivers coach in 2003.
Swinney and the Tigers would go on to lose on their next five trips to Georgia Tech, including in 2009, 2011 and 2014 when he was head coach.
Those days are long gone, and so is Johnson. Geoff Collins has been impressive in imparting his culture on the Yellow Jackets, but at this point of his rebuilding process culture can only provide so much resistance when confronted with the colossus from Upstate South Carolina.
Hanging half a hundred on a team in 30 minutes on the road suggests something close to perfection by the visitors. That it wasn't close to perfect underscores just how much of a mismatch this was.
Lawrence threw his first pick in a year. Travis Etienne lost a fumble. Frank Ladson dropped a deep ball. And Clemson's secondary allowed a deep-ball touchdown.
But there's only so much you can do when Lawrence and Co. keep getting their cracks, and when Brent Venables' defense is overwhelming at the line of scrimmage.
Two years ago, Lawrence made a convincing case that he was the Tigers' starting quarterback. On his return trip, he made yet another case that he's by far the best player in college football.
Clemson extended its ACC winning streak to 26 games, and its overall non-bowl winning streak to 37 games.
The Tigers piled up 671 yards and 29 first downs on 88 plays, averaging 7.6 yards per play. Lawrence threw for 404 yards and five touchdowns on a 24-of-33 clip, and Clemson finished with 500 yards through the air while averaging 15.2 yards per completion.
Other than a 59-yard pass from Jeff Simms to Jalen Camp that knotted the score at 7-7, life for Georgia Tech's offense was miserable. The Jackets had just 204 yards on 58 plays and committed three turnovers that Clemson turned into 17 points.
Tech fumbled four times, losing two. Simms completed 6 of 13 passes for 81 yards with an interception and the touchdown. Clemson totaled five sacks and 12 tackles for loss.
Amari Rodgers had six catches for 161 yards and two touchdowns, including an 83-yard catch and run. Cornell Powell had four grabs for 50 yards and a touchdown, and Davis Allen was back in the end zone while recording three catches for 67 yards.
A year ago, Collins opened his Georgia Tech tenure by rolling out the weightlifting benches at Death Valley during pregame warmups.
This time he watched his possibly peerless visitors flex their muscles as Swinney brought the triple-option back to Tech's stadium.
FROM THE TIGER FAN SHOP: Click HERE for more in-season DEALS on officially-licensed CLEMSON apparel and gear!
