Over the past two games, Clemson has dominated every facet of play against both Georgia Tech and Boston College—except for one.
Head Coach Dabo Swinney has lamented his team’s inability to win the turnover margin on both occasions in his postgame press conference, sounding the alarm about the danger of allowing other teams to have extra possessions within a football game. The Tigers beat the Yellow Jackets and Eagles by a combined 36 points, but Swinney does not want to keep playing with fire.
His defensive coordinator agrees.
“There’s not a better stat that’s more telling in winning and losing and more profound,” Brent Venables said. “But we’ve shown we can overcome that.”
The combination of those theories will be put to the test when Clemson travels to face Miami at high noon on Saturday. The Tigers are -1 in turnover margin for the season, with 11 takeaways and 12 giveaways.
The Hurricanes, on the other hand, lead the country in turnover margin at +13, tied with Western Kentucky for the honors. The Cane offense has only turned the ball over twice all season long, and Swinney knows his team cannot afford to treat the game like a charity event.
“They are doing a great job of taking care of the football, like I said, leading the nation in that regard,” Swinney said. “So that will be a big factor in this game.”
Venables’ defenses at Clemson have found other ways to stop opposing attacks besides simply forcing turnovers. In each of the past two seasons, the Tigers finished with a turnover margin of +6, good enough for a tie for 29th and 33rd in the country, respectively.
The 2013 defense forced 30 turnovers, putting it inside the top ten nationally. In contrast, last season’s defense had 24 takeaways, which was tied for 34th.
A keyword thrown around to describe a defense whose forte is enticing mistakes from an opposing offense is “opportunistic”. Typically, in the college football universe, the word “opportunistic” connotes some other things—namely, that the defense has a hard time keeping teams from scoring without those big plays.
Clemson’s defense from a year ago reached legendary status for its ability to force three-and-outs. Venables says he prefers teams that get off the field in three plays and stop the run, but he also understands the value of causing turnovers—if they can be had.
“Sometimes you’ve got to get lucky,” he said. “Sometimes you get into a rhythm with turnovers and people expose themselves.”
One of the strengths of the 2015 Clemson defense is its versatility. Venables has been able to count on three-and-outs from a group that possesses the collective ability to combat most systems in college football in its base package.
“We do have some diversity within our group of players,” he said. “I know it’s been well-documented we don’t have the same depth of players, but we have guys that can do a lot of different things, too.”
Over the past three seasons, Clemson is 5-3 when losing the turnover margin. Three of those five wins have come in the first six games of this season. Swinney knows his team is fighting an uphill battle, and he hopes his team can make things easier for itself before it turns a win into a loss.