CLEMSON -- The score from the South Carolina game two years ago, 31-30, suggests Clemson's offense did its part to win.

Anyone with even a rudimentary recall of that dark Death Valley day knows otherwise.

Seven of those points came on a pick-six gifted by Jeremiah Trotter to open the scoring.

The offense did accumulate 237 rushing yards that day, and that's usually the recipe for winning.

But the recipe for losing -- the offense going into a shell in the second half -- is what you probably remember like it was yesterday.

A 40-game home winning streak was gone, just like that. And of course frailties on defense and special teams also had something to do with it.

Clemson has a home game in six days, but what's on everyone's mind today is the game 13 days from now.

That bitter 2022 defeat was the beginning of the end for Brandon Streeter in his first and only season as Clemson's offensive coordinator. He lost his cool in the press conference afterward when asked if he considered pulling DJ Uiagalelei, who was in a bad place physically and mentally.

Cade Klubnik rescued the offense a week later in the ACC championship but wasn't yet fit to do it in the Orange Bowl against Tennessee. Streeter was out, and Dabo Swinney later pulled a major coup by landing hotshot Garrett Riley from TCU.

Riley is 23 games in, and the overall body of work hasn't exactly been scintillating.

When Riley was hired in January of 2023, to us it felt like Swinney's decision in 2010 to part ways with Billy Napier and bring in Chad Morris from the outside.