By Will Vandervort.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney isn’t buying it. In his view quarterback Cole Stoudt is playing fine and he isn’t concerned nor does he agree that the 21st-ranked Tigers have a lack of a big-play passing game with the senior at the helm.
“I think he is growing each week,” Swinney said on Monday during his weekly teleconference with the media. “I think he has gotten better each week from where he was in the Louisville game. I thought he played much better at BC and I thought he played better the other day.
“You have to take what is there.”
What is there isn’t too much.
In Clemson’s 16-6 victory over Syracuse on Saturday, Stoudt completed 24 of 35 passes for 209 yards. But when breaking those numbers down, it’s obvious the Tigers have not taken as nearly as many chances down field as they did when Deshaun Watson was calling the signals out.
Against the Orange, Stoudt completed just 5 of 14 passes downfield and was just 3 of 12 over 11 yards. He completed just as many passes to Syracuse defenders when throwing the ball over 15 yards than he did to his wide receivers – two.
Twenty one of Stoudt’s 35 passes were thrown behind the line of scrimmage and 19 of those were completed for 124 yards.
“I mean, you guys kill me, man,” Swinney said. “If we are throwing the ball all over the park down field, ‘Well, the running game stinks.’ Now we are running the ball up and down the field and are throwing ball-control passes that tie to the running game, and now it’s ‘We don’t throw the ball downfield.’
“You can’t win for losing with some of you guys, but all I know is that he did an excellent job versus what we were seeing. When we had to have some big plays, he made them.”
In fairness, Stoudt did complete a 17-yard pass to Mike Williams on a post route near the end of the third quarter and later on that same drive he hit tight end Stanton Seckinger with a 19-yard touchdown pass, just his second of the season.
He also found Williams on a 25-yard back-shoulder pass in the first half.
But those plays were few and far between and given Saturday’s performance by the offense, plus what happened against Louisville and Boston College in the previous two weeks, fans are wondering if too much pressure is being put on the defense to continue to win games.
“He made a great throw to Mike Williams down the sideline—back-shoulder throw. He made an excellent throw down the field on a post route to Mike Williams. He made an unbelievable throw on the touchdown to Seckinger,” Swinney said. “We missed on a couple where he got hit on the two interceptions, but I think we had plays there. We had a post route open and we had a one-on-one downfield and his arm got hit.”
Swinney insisted that there is nothing wrong with Stoudt and he is doing what is being asked of him to do and is taking what the defense is giving him.
“That’s just our running game. If you pay attention to what they were doing defensively, their plan was to see if we can put drives together and see if we would be patient,” Swinney said. “They played a lot of two safety stuff and when people do that, you have to be able to run the ball.
“A lot of our run game, and we rushed the ball for (166) yards, but we really rushed it for 200 and something because those are runs to us. I know they’re going into the passing stats, but those are part of our run game.
“He got us in some of our ball control type of stuff based on what they were doing. He kept it a few times, threw the ball out there and just really did a nice job. But that is what we have to do in order to win the game. Their plan was to try not to give up the big play and see if Clemson could be patient. See if Clemson could put the drives together and not mess it up. We messed it up a few times, but we did just enough to win the game.”