By Will Vandervort.

There is a reason why Clemson is leading the ACC in passing offense and has but up 742 yards through the air the last two games – that’s what defenses are giving them.

On Saturday, Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson put the ball up 36 times, while completing 27 of them for 435 yards and a school-record six touchdowns in the Tigers’ 50-35 victory over North Carolina.

Tar Heels head coach Larry Fedora said afterwards that their scheme was to shut down the run and force Watson, who was making his first start, to beat them.

North Carolina, a week after giving up 343 rushing yards to East Carolina, held the Tigers to 92 yards on 44 carries.

“It just depends on how people play us,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said during his teleconference on Sunday. “Now that we have a guy that has gone out there and has set a school-record with six touchdowns (as he chuckled), we might see a little different plan.

“I think you have to call plays accordingly to give yourself the best chance to be successful. They did some things with getting their safeties involved, trapping in the corners to create some problems for us. Some of it was schematic on how they got us in the running game and some of it was we had a guy defeated or the tight end did not do his job or the running back did not run where he was supposed to be. There were combinations of some things.”

It all added up to Watson, a true freshman, putting the offense on his back and carrying the Tigers to victory.

“We are going to have to react each week,” Swinney said. “As he proves he can beat you with his arm, then we might see some different things defensively.”

Watson has now thrown for 914 yards and 10 touchdowns this season, both season highs by a true freshman quarterback in Clemson history. The previous records were 750 passing yards and five touchdowns by Willie Jordan in 1975.

“At the end of the day, it is about what they are willing to give us here,” Swinney said. “We want to be able to run the ball effectively, but if people are loading up the box to stop that then we have to take what is there. We can’t be stubborn.

“If we can be successful with that, then hopefully we can become a little more balanced.”

Through four games, only two Clemson running backs are over 100 yards and no one is close to going over 200 yards. C.J. Davidson leads the team with 133 yards on 36 carries, while D.J. Howard has 104 yards on 30 carries.

Swinney admitted that he and offensive coordinator Chad Morris got a little impatient against North Carolina and should have stuck with some of the things they got spooked about.

“We probably could have helped (the offense) with a couple of calls, but North Carolina did some things and gambled on some things, but again, that cost them as well. We are going to improve their,” he said. “There is nothing major. It’s just some things we have to get on the same page with.”

Swinney emphasized a couple of plays where the offensive line had the power play blocked perfectly, but the running back is over running the kick-out guy.

“That’s just a small example,” he said. “You have a great play set up, but we are a little fast at running back, but we have a freshman out there that we have to coach. There are a lot of moving pieces going on.”

In the third quarter, Clemson had a third-and-one play and Morris called for a quarterback power off left guard with the center pulling. After tight end Jay McCullough went in motion, someone moved up front and the Tigers were penalized.

“We were probably fixing to score on a forty-yard run with Deshaun and they hit us with jumping offside. There are a lot of little things that frustrated us during the game, but again, we settled in and put up fifty points,” Swinney said.

And they did it by throwing the ball.