Dominant performance
By: hale-mcgranahan October 10, 2015

The stats look awfully good on paper.

In Saturday’s 43-24 win over the Yellow Jackets, Clemson held Georgia Tech to 71 yards rushing, the lowest total during Paul Johnson’s tenure in Atlanta.

“I just watched how we played,” Brent Venables told reporters after the game. “The stats, I haven’t really looked at them, I just watched how we played.”

Impressed would be one way to describe it.

“You feel very good. That’s a really good performance,” Venables said. “We continued to have answers, continued to talk the stresses and playing the cat-and-mouse game.

“That was fun to be apart of.”

Dorian O’Daniel had a good time, too. The redshirt sophomore outside linebacker finished the night with seven tackles and three tackles for loss.

“To be honest, we were just executing our keys, reading and trusting our keys, not doing the next man’s job and just (staying) focused on our job,” O’Daniel said.

Jayron Kearse matched O’Daniel with three tackles for loss.

“We came right out and hit those guys right in the mouth,” he said. “We made some big plays early. Going into the second quarter, we had a big enough lead to where they couldn’t play their type of football. They had to play our game. We had control of what they had to do and what they wanted to do.”

Entering Saturday’s game, Georgia Tech led the ACC in rushing offense (311.8 yards/game).

“We didn’t reinvent the wheel or do something nobody else had ever done, (not) by any stretch,”

Venables said. “We just did what we did. We executed it well, with precision, with discipline and being physical, and staying on our feet. So, regardless of the scheme, it requires those other elements. That has to be paramount to what you’re doing, staying on your feet and playing with discipline, and playing with precision.

“If they’re a little bit off and you’re precise, you have a chance to be really disruptive and not allow them to get into a flow, like you saw today. They don’t have the same skill at some positions, I understand that, but still, that was more about us than anything, we think.”