By Will Vandervort.

The responses about the tight ends’ performances in last Saturday’s loss to No. 8 Georgia were about as inconsistent as their play on the field at Sanford Stadium.

On one side, Clemson offensive coordinator Chad Morris was not pleased at all with how his tight ends played, while on the other side, head coach Dabo Swinney said they really did not involve the tight ends as much as they would have liked to.

Regardless, the tight end position in the Tigers’ 45-21 loss to the Bulldogs was non-existent and it is one that cannot stay the same if Clemson hopes to get its offense going against South Carolina State this Saturday in Death Valley.

“I think it was an issue,” Morris said. “We just could not seem to get those guys free like we have in the past.”

Clemson’s tight ends caught two passes in the game and were targeted just three times overall. Jay Jay McCullough caught one pass for two yards and Stanton Seckinger had one for no gain.

Against Georgia last year, Seckinger caught two passes for 26 yards, including the eventual game-winning touchdown – a nine-yard pass from Tajh Boyd. The Tigers had four catches for 36 yards overall from the tight end position in last year’s game.

This time around, it appeared the tight ends struggled to get involved. Seckinger and Jordan Leggett were jammed on the line all afternoon.

Only McCullough scored some brownie points with Morris.

“I think Jay Jay McCullough came on and did an exceptional job in blocking,” Clemson’s offensive coordinator said. “He was probably the most physical of all of tight ends.

“I was pleased to see him definitely earn some more playing time and earned some trust from us as coaches, especially in short yardage situations. He was really effective in his blocking.”

Swinney agreed with Morris.

“Jay Jay got in there and did a nice job,” he said.

McCullough was in there because starter and senior Sam Cooper broke his fibula in his left foot during pregame warm ups, which left the coaches scrambling just minutes before kickoff.

“That was kind of a freakish deal,” Morris said. “We are literally in there five to ten minutes before we came out and we have all of our offensive coaches up there with our game-plan board trying to scratch and cut-and-paste.”

Cooper is expected to miss the next three weeks.

“Sam was more of an on-the-line guy for us. He was going to help set the edge,” Morris said. “We had to make sure all of our personnel packages were kosher and we were able to get guys lined up. I thought we did really well with that.”

McCullough helped make things a little easier, but the same can’t be said for Leggett, who really struggled with his blocking and ran some sloppy routes.

“I don’t think they really struggled getting off the line, we just did not involve them quite as much as we would like to and a lot of that just got dictated into what we do,” Swinney said.

Whatever is the Tigers do with the tight ends, odds are its going to change, or at least the coaches hope it does. Of course that is depending on exactly what the problem is.