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CLEMSON | When recalling past instances of greatness, our minds instantly drift to the images that solidified the greatness.
The natural instinct is to ignore the often messy path toward that greatness.
Clemson's two most recent national championship teams are forever immortal, forever bathed in celebration of perfection because they were pretty damned close to perfect when it mattered most in late December and January.
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Yet even into December of 2016, it was totally reasonable to wonder if that team had what it took. Deshaun Watson had piled up the interceptions, 15 of them. Brent Venables' prized defense had given up big numbers on the regular -- 35 to Virginia Tech in the ACC championship game, 43 to Pittsburgh at Death Valley, 34 to Florida State, 36 to Louisville and Lamar Jackson, and 24 at home to Troy.
Many times that year a lot of folks wondered what was going on between the ears of a team that was supposed to light everyone up after so many guys returned from the group that did not take a back seat to Alabama in Arizona.
Now is when we have to clarify something, because by now surely some of you are laughing at the thought that this 2022 team should be grouped with the greatest two teams in school history.
You can stop laughing, because that's not the thought here.
The point is that if some rollercoaster regular-season tendencies ended up being a microscopic footnote of the 2016 and 2018 stories, then it's probably not fair to resolutely proclaim what the 2022 team can or cannot achieve based on the first three games.
We start to find out a lot more over the next two weeks, when Clemson visits Wake Forest and then welcomes N.C. State to Death Valley.
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To date, the virtually unanimous offseason premise about Dabo Swinney's 14th team has proven flawed in ways both positive and negative.
The positive: DJ Uiagalelei has been a good quarterback, and appears to be getting better. Raise your hand if you predicted this.
The negative: The defense that was hailed as the best in college football, the impenetrable fortress that would help carry the offense through storms, has fallen well short of that hype.
Yes, the story of this team to date goes deeper than the binary framing above: The offensive play-calling, rhythm and creativity have sometimes been balkier than you'd expect. No one is suggesting that this is like 2016, when you knew a pyrotechnic offense was right around the corner when the elite headliners stopped being bored and got pissed.
Then again, play-calling is harder when you aren't in possession of said elite offensive playmakers. There's really no comparison between now and 2016 and 2018, which is a topic for another day.
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The broad view of this offense to date, incorporating how bad it looked last year and how far Uiagalelei had to go this past offseason, makes it hard to harshly grade Brandon Streeter through three games.
He's in charge of quarterbacks, and his top quarterback looks so much better. And he looks so much better even in spite of a receiving corps that's still doing the two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back thing.
It's fair to say Streeter and Co. should've leaned more on the running game last night. That's our view, that the game turns out quite a bit different if you resolutely pound the run earlier (there were just eight carries for the running backs halfway through).
Then again, Uiagalelei had six carries for 42 yards at halftime. The sight of the junior further expanding his dual-threat capabilities, by running well not just on designed runs and scrambles but also by pulling on the zone-read when the edge defenders crashed down on the running back, is unquestionably a positive and necessary development.
We all knew entering the season that the offensive progression was going to be incremental as the staff tried to methodically build back confidence that was torn to bits in 2021. Far from perfect, no doubt. But the incremental layers are there, and now we're interested to see if the trajectory continues upward against more rigorous competition.
It's the other side of the ball where the lapses have been most eye-opening. Maybe we're not placing enough weight on the absence of so many starters last night. Maybe we're not sufficiently acknowledging the difficulty of turning around and playing Furman five days after playing at Georgia Tech.
But here's the deal: This defense ranks 62nd nationally in third-down conversions. Under Brent Venables it felt like a down year in that category when they sank as low as 24th nationally.
The Tigers have allowed 12 pass plays of 20 yards or more, ranking 100th nationally in that statistic. They have allowed four plays of 30 yards or more, and all four came last night.
It has been too easy, way too often, against these guys thus far. And if your inclination is to grade on a curve based on the injuries and strange circumstances, that curve is probably wiped out in view of the fact that Clemson has played an FCS team, a Georgia Tech offense that got shut out by Ole Miss yesterday, and a Louisiana Tech outfit that features a good scheme but only a handful of good players.
We spent a lot of time in the offseason saying you can win a lot of games with great defense. The head coach said the same thing, and it's hard to see him grading on a curve; he sure as hell didn't last week.
Maybe the higher stakes of the next two weeks and beyond bring out a higher level for not just the defense but for everyone. It would most certainly not be the first time a proud, powerful program shook free from some messiness to reveal its bona-fides with everyone watching.
The 2018 team achieved perfection in our memories because of the playoff strangulations of Notre Dame and Alabama, who couldn't combine to crack 20 points.
Not long before that, the same defense allowed 35 points and 600 yards in one game against South Carolina and things seemed in disarray.
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That bunch had some messiness on the doorstep of playoff domination.
No, we're not saying the 2022 bunch is headed for the same glory.
No two paths are the same. And wherever this path leads for this Clemson team, it will be defined by whether or not the Tigers return to the elite after falling far short of it last year.
It's on this team to get better in a lot of ways. It's on us to remember that even the greatest teams have messiness and weirdness along the way.
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