By Will Vanderfort.

By Will Vandervort

When Gifford Timothy went down with a knee injury in the first quarter of the Chick-fil-A Bowl, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney looked at offensive coordinator Chad Morris and offensive line coach Robbie Caldwell as if to say, “What are we going to do now?”

It was quite the predicament considering Timothy, the starting right tackle, was responsible for blocking LSU defensive ends Barkevious Mingo and Sam Montgomery. Clemson was already having trouble with Mingo as he recorded a sack and four tackles for loss before halftime.

“We had to piecemeal things up front and do things we have not really done all year,” Morris said.

With Timothy’s backup, Shaq Anthony, ineligible to play due to academic reasons, redshirt freshman Joe Gore was originally sent in, but after nine snaps it was obvious he was not ready to block a defensive end like Mingo. So the Clemson coaches moved Brandon Thomas—the starting left tackle—over to right and then brought in freshman Isaiah Battle, a player who had taken only 80 snaps all season, to play left tackle.

It was not pretty. Quarterback Tajh Boyd was on his back just as often as he was standing up, but the offensive line was able to get the job done just enough. The offense ran 100 plays and racked up 445 yards against the nation’s No. 8 defense at the time.

“We had Brandon Thomas playing a position he hadn’t played all year. We had a freshman out there who had not played three quality snaps all year blocking Mingo and Sam,” Swinney said. “Listen, it wasn’t pretty, but they hung in there and they kept playing.”

In all, Battle played a season-high 73 snaps at left tackle against two of the best defensive ends in the country. It was an experience that will prove to be invaluable next season.

“I think we will be as good in the trenches as we have been in a long time,” Swinney said. “This will probably be the first time up front that we have the correct combination of talent, depth and experience.

“To me, that is the most exciting thing. We still have a lot of youth.”

In all, Clemson will bring back four of the five starters along the offensive line. Though losing Remington Award Finalist and First-Team All-American Dalton Freeman will be missed, the Tigers will have more experienced depth along the front than it has had in years.

Besides the return of Thomas and Timothy as starting tackles, Clemson also returns starting guards Tyler Shatley (right) and David Beasley (left) as well as backups Battle (tackle), Gore (tackle), Anthony (tackle), Kalon Davis (guard) and Reid Webster (guard).

Ryan Norton appears to be the leading candidate to replace Freeman at center, but Jay Guillermo, who redshirted this past season, will push to be a starter there as well. There are also a few others along the offensive line that redshirted or did not play very much this season that will be in the mix too.

“We will only have two seniors on the offensive line, but there are a lot of guys that are going to be even better,” Swinney said. “Taking a guy like Isaiah Battle and letting him go beat LSU, and him playing left tackle, as a true freshman, he will grow immensely from that in another year.

“We have a lot of young players that I’m excited about that I think are going to be even better. I think the offensive line this year had a pretty good first group, a couple of guys close after that, and then it was a pretty big drop. It was not talent, though, it was just dependability. I think that gap will close tremendously. I think we will have a lot of competition in the offensive line.”