By Will Vandervort
ATLANTA — Les Miles has been watching Clemson since a guy by the name of William “The Refrigerator” Perry wore the No. 66 orange Jersey for the ACC’s Tigers from 1981-’84.
“I have always kept my eye on that Clemson team,” he said.
It’s funny, but things have turned around. Clemson now keeps its eye on Miles’ LSU teams and hopes one day it’s program can reach the consistent level Miles has kept the LSU program at since he started their eight years ago.
Thirteenth-ranked Clemson will try to get a good start on that tonight when it takes on Miles and the seventh-ranked LSU Tigers in the Chick-fil-A Bowl (7:30, ESPN). Miles has led his Tigers to six 10-plus win seasons in his eight years at LSU. To put that into proper perspective, Clemson has only had nine 10-plus win seasons in its history, including this year’s team.
“This has not been the norm for us and we are trying to make it the norm to where we are in this situation every year, like LSU has been,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said. “LSU has been a program that’s won 10, 11, 12 and 13 games pretty regularly under Coach Miles.
“They are a national championship caliber team and we are not quite there yet. But we have made great progress. We have had back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time since the ‘80s, and we won 10 regular season games this year for the first time in 31 years. I think you’ve got to at least acknowledge that we are making some progress.
“We are a top 15 team. If you are going to be a top 10 team, you have to step up and win games like this at some point.”
And that’s something Clemson (10-2) has not done, at least not this year. Clemson faced two top 10 teams in Florida State and South Carolina this season and lost both. Though Clemson was competitive in those games and had third quarter leads, it failed to hang on and win.
“We just really want to go out there and prove what kind of team we are,” quarterback Tajh Boyd said. “We are getting a chance to play against one of the best, but for us, it’s more about the competition, the nature of the business, the nature of the game and going out there and proving who the best out there is. That’s what we pride ourselves on.”
To be the best, you have to beat the best and in order for Clemson to beat LSU (10-2), the ACC’s Tigers will have to have more success on offense than it did the last time it played a defense the caliber of LSU’s. The SEC’s Tigers are ranked among the top 10 defenses nationally in five different categories and ranks eighth nationally in total defense, allowing only 292.2 yards per game.
LSU also ranks 9th in pass eff. defense, 9th in rush defense, 8th in turnovers gained and 10th in interceptions.
But as good as LSU is on defense, Mississippi and Arkansas proved it has some weaknesses. Ole Miss totaled 463 yards, including 316 through the air, while Arkansas threw the ball for 359 yards and had 462 total yards.
“They spread them out and hit them here and there with a couple of passes and had a couple of good runs,” tight end Brandon Ford said about the success of Ole Miss’ and Arkansas’ offenses. “They lost the game in field position and that’s a critical thing that we have to be ready for.
“They had spurts where they had good passes and they had good runs. You just have to catch them when they are slipping and take advantage of it.”
Ford says seeing the success Ole Miss and Arkansas had on the LSU defense gives them the confidence that they can make some plays in tonight’s game. But when the opportunities come, unlike the South Carolina game, they have to take advantage of them.
“When you see a team that runs the same type of offense like that, you kind of get happy,” he said. “If they can do it, and if your team is actually better at doing it, you get kind of happy. But, at the same time, it’s going to come down to executing. Those guys, they executed. I they did not execute, the game could have been worse. But they fought hard the whole game and they came up short because of field position.
“If we can execute on all three sides of the ball, then we will be fine.”