By Will Vandervort.

Chad Morris told his offensive players that when they woke up this morning they should have had two trains of thoughts, “You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.”

“If you are part of the problem you are going to be gone. If you are part of the solution, let’s go to work,” Morris said. “We don’t need your belly aching. We don’t need you pouting. Everybody is hurting this morning. It hurt yesterday. Nobody wants to lose.

“But you are either a part of the problem or part of the solution, figure it out.”

The problems in last Saturday’s loss to No. 12 Georgia started late in the second quarter. Morris said it actually started on play 51, following Mike Williams’ 21 yard gain to the Georgia 22. From there the Tigers faced a third down-and-five from the 17 when a missed assignment on the offensive line forced Stoudt to throw incomplete.

On the next play, kicker Ammon Lakip missed a 35-yard field goal. At the time, no one knew that was the last time the Clemson offense would threaten to score. In fact, the Tigers picked up only one first down and 15 total yards the rest of the afternoon.

“From play fifty to seventy-nine for whatever the reason, and there is no excuse, we did not execute as well,” Morris said. “We had thirty-one missed assignments and it is hard to beat anybody with ten missed assignments, much less thirty-one missed assignments.

“You can’t have that. You can’t operate and function in that type of environment and expect to win. That was pretty much the tale of the second half.”

Clemson’s missed assignments led to a 0-for-7 effort on third down in the second half after being 7-for-13 in the first 30 minutes.

“We would get to second-and-five and we would get to third-and-two and were unable to convert off of it whether it was a missed assignment here or a misread there and it just kind of snowballed on us,” Morris said. “That, coupled with fact you are trying to play conservative inside your own 10-yard line.”

The average starting field position for Clemson in the third quarter was its own 14-yard line.

“You are trying to sit here and say, ‘Hey this game is in hand. We just don’t need to do anything deep in our own territory that is going to put us in a worse situation especially in the third quarter. That was kind of my mindset as a play caller,” Morris said. “I was thinking that all we needed was a spark, get us a first down, one leads to two and two leads to three and here we go. Now we are rolling again.”

Instead, Clemson, who will play S.C. State this coming Saturday at 12:30 p.m. in its the home opener, missed blocks, ran the wrong routes or missed a read.

The Tigers opened its first drive of the second half at its own 23. After two Cole Stoudt passes to Adam Humphries that netted six yards, Stoudt kept the ball up the middle for two yards and they punted.

On its second possession, Clemson started at its own seven following a 37-yard pooch punt by Georgia’s Adam Erickson. On first down, Davidson rushed for two yards and then followed with another run for three yards for third-and-five. But Stoudt’s pass to tight end Stanton Seckinger went for no gain and again the Tigers had to punt.

Deshaun Watson came in and tried to give Clemson a spark on its third possession, but his drive gained just seven yards and on third down he overthrew a wide open Demarre Kitt around the Clemson 40.

Morris finally got the first down he had been looking for on the next possession as running back C.J. Davidson ran 14 yards from his own eight-yard line on the last play of the third quarter.

“I was telling the guys on the sideline, ‘Okay, there we go. There is our first down. Now let’s get this thing going,’” Morris said.

They never did. Whatever momentum Clemson had died with the end of the third quarter. On the next play, Stoudt was sacked for a seven-yard loss and after a two-yard keeper, he found running back Wayne Gallman open over the middle, but with only one man to beat after a 10-yard gain he stumbled and fell to the ground five yards shy of a first down.

On the next three possessions, Stoudt and Watson were sacked three times and could not get the ball past their own 25-yard line.

“We are not going to play perfect and we understand that,” Morris said. “We have a bunch of young inexperienced guys and this was a valuable learning experience for us. There were a lot of good things to come out of it but there are a lot of things we have to get better at.”