By Will Vandervort.
By Will Vandervort
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Brent Venables knew coming into Saturday night’s ACC Showdown with No. 4 Florida State that his defense did not have much room for error. Unfortunately for him and No. 10 Clemson, the Tigers had way too many errors. And Florida State quarterback E.J. Manuel made them pay for almost all of them.
Manuel threw for 380 yards and rushed for 103 more, while throwing for two scores in downing Clemson 49-37 in front of 83,231 at Doak Campbell Stadium.
“I thought he played well,” Clemson’s defensive coordinator said about the Florida State quarterback. “He got in and out of some plays like a more mature quarterback would do and put his team in the right plays. He played good, but I think we helped him too.”
Clemson (3-1, 0-1) did the help by allowing one big play after another. In all, the Seminoles amassed 667 total yards, including 16 plays over 15 yards or more, and nine of those went for more than 27 yards. By the way, the 667 yards were the most given up by a Clemson defense since the 2000 Tigers allowed 771 yards to a Chris Weinke led FSU team.
“There were a lot of things (that went wrong),” Venables said. “That starts with me. What are we asking our guys to do and why are there issues in the run (defense), passing (defense) and letting guys get behind us and giving up cheap scores?
“Why did we get punched in the gut in the second half and they scored at will? It is not just one thing.”
Venables was right, it wasn’t just one thing. It was a whole a bunch of issues that might take the rest of the season to figure out and fix. Florida State rushed for 287 yards, while averaging 7.2 yards per carry. They also threw for 380 more and were eight of 13 on third down.
The Seminoles (4-0, 2-0) also averaged 8.9 yards per snap. There was no pass rush. There was missed tackles and the two turnovers charged to FSU were both free gifts – a muffed punt and a fumble snap on a center-quarterback exchange.
“We have to get a lot better in a lot of areas, and it starts in the run game,” Venables said. “We can go back and look at the personnel and see what we are asking them to do. There are a lot of things we have to evaluate—the scheme, the personnel, and a lot of things.
“I did think our guys competed hard. I really did. For four quarters they competed hard, but we didn’t always coach them well and sometimes they did not play well or smart.”
What was disheartening was the fact the defense gave up a 14-point lead in seven-and-half minutes in the third quarter, and only stopped the Seminoles twice in the second half.
“They ran everything we practiced,” nickel back Travis Blanks said. “Towards the end, we did not fit a few things up right. They did not do any trick plays on us. There are a lot of things technique wise that we need to watch film on and fix.”
The main one is just getting off the field.
“That was very frustrating,” Blanks said. “One of our goals is to go three-and-out and get off the field. We have to give our offense a chance. We need to improve on that and we will improve on that.”