It has been seven years since Southern Cal took Oklahoma to the woodshed 55-19 in the Orange Bowl to win a national championship but the spirit was there last night and then some as West Virginia beat the wheels off of Clemson 70-33. The Mountaineers were firing on all cylinders from the second quarter on and what resulted was an absolutely mind blowing showing by the ‘Eers offense.
Aided, of course, by the equally stupifying performance of the Clemson defense. This game went from two defenses getting ran out of the stadium to one group of guys deciding after a quarter and change they’d had enough and it was time to play while the other squad never got the memo.
First and foremost hats off to Dana Holgorsen for the way his kids were prepared, the execution and the drive they played with through out the game. Quarterback Geno Smith was phenomenal as he piled up some 401 yards passing, six touchdown passes and most importantly zero interceptions. He clearly outdueled his Clemson counterpart and the offense that couldn’t get right for chunks of the Big East season found a heck of a way to spoil all of Clemson’s BCS fun.
As far as first year coaches go it appears Holgorsen has found a way to make this one a success. He joins Brady Hoke in this year’s club of coaches winning their BCS debut at their new school in their first year. Kudos to him and the future looks bright for the Mountaineers; Geno Smith is back, Tavon Austin should be back along with Shawne Alston to set the stage for big offensive success as WVU looks to move to the Big XII, or not.
So, all credit to West Virginia’s outburst. They put it on the Tigers in a big way. But that’s not the story, the Mountaineers did their job and that job sure was made easy by Clemson deciding almost collectively that doing their own job just wasn’t on their agenda for the day.
I’ll get to the defense in a second but the offense deserves their chance too, because while folks are right to jump on Kevin Steele and the defense the offense cannot be absolved of guilt.
Sure it sucks when your defense doesn’t stop anyone Chad Morris. Of course it can make your job a bit harder to have to score on every possession but guess what, people have been doing that all year. Hell, you did it this year when your team gave up all those points to Maryland. Ask Oklahoma State or Baylor or Washington how they handled it; scoring more. That’s why you just got the raise to be the ACC’s highest paid coordinator, to score points. The minimal targeting of Dwayne Allen and refusal to consistently stretch the field, even as WVU showed they couldn’t cover your guys, did not help in this effort.
After scoring early and often the air went out of the Tigers’ sails and that starts with the failure to counter the West Virginia defensive strategy and inability to rebound from the devastating 14 point swing brought on by Andre Ellington’s fumble that was returned 99 yards for a touchdown.
It wasn’t just play calling for the Tigers’ offense it was execution as well. The run game wasn’t working consistently. Tajh Boyd missed on open passes while receivers mishandled some of the good balls he threw. DeAndre Hopkins showed up going over 100 yards receiving while Sammy Watkins was kept bottled up by the Mountaineers as they sold out on the screens and quick passes Morris kept attempting to force down everyone’s throat.
This offense didn’t play well enough to warrant a win here in the Rose Bowl; not because 443 yards, 33 points and 24 first downs isn’t enough. No, they didn’t do enough to win because of the four turnovers and three quarters of ineptitude that resulted in 16 total points; one less than they scored in the first quarter alone. You can’t win ball games by sending your defense out on the field after short possessions and turnovers.
That said this Clemson defense certainly did not help themselves, regardless of what the offense did or did not do. In all of the performances we’ve seen though this crap defensive bowl season this is only outranked by Washington-Baylor from a “this is horrible” standpoint. At least WVU showed up to play a little defense and try to tackle people because Clemson most certainly did not.
Clemson’s defensive effort can really be summed up in a handful of issues; bad run fits by the linebackers, poor gap integrity by the defensive line, inability to cover receivers out of zone or man looks and a heavy dose of overall confusion.
Oh, and horrible, horrible tackling. Not just “missed tackles” last night but bad approaches; stopping the feet, leaving too much air between the ball carrier and the defender, diving at ankles, not watching hips, not getting the head across. Whew the list is a long one.
The game was ugly, Kevin Steele got taken to school by a scheme that his team should have been able to get a solid rehearsal against in their bowl practices. They looked like a team that had never played against the hurry up and spread principles before; except you know, that’s what their own team runs a variance of.
It really was a masterful job by Holgorsen; the first year head coach mixed stretching Clemson’s defense vertically to find massive gaps in coverage with timely run calls and his odd little flip pass to abuse the Tigers’ defense.
Clemson was unprepared; had no answers for Tavon Austin and even the adjustments attempted by Steele were ineffective. Holgorsen neutralized the Tigers’ best asset, their defensive line, by running and throwing the ball quickly and the liabilities that exist all over the secondary and linebacking corp got their pants pulled down.
West Virginia can speed into the offseason with visions of endzone celebrations, massive point totals and as proud, and recent, winners of the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange Bowls. Not many folks can say that.
For Clemson this is just another humbling moment for a school proud with tradition. They expected to celebrate 30 years since their national title by winning the very bowl game that hosted their title team. Instead they got beat like a drum and left with more questions than answers entering the 2012 season. Did they overpay for Chad Morris? Is Kevin Steele going to stay? Hell, should Kevin Steele stay? And, as has been the question since 2008, is Dabo the guy for the job?
