Clemson’s issues on defense started way before the season began.

It all started when the Clemson coaches decided not to go get an all-conference type of defensive end out of the transfer portal.

Prior to the season, during the preseason media outing at the Allen Reeves Football Complex, head coach Dabo Swinney and defensive ends coach Chris Rumph admitted they felt good with the pieces they had in place and believed they did not need one.

Looking back, that was obviously a mistake.

Clemson’s run defense this year was the worst it has been since 1975, and the Tigers could not set the edge on the left side of the line for most of the season. It was especially obvious when they played well-balanced offenses.

The Tigers allowed 4.7 yards per rush this year, it worst total since 1975. Overall, Clemson gave up 160.6 per game on the ground, the most since 2011.

“In January, we’ll do our end of the year self-scout review and look at all the issues and problems and how teams attacked us throughout the year, and you can just see kind of the trends and stuff, and so forth and so on,” defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin said. “That’s kind of the next step. Obviously, no recruiting up until the middle of January before we can get out. So just assess all of that with the staff, cut-ups by coverages, fronts, personnel groupings, so forth and so on, and just give a thorough evaluation. Then lay out the plan for February and just how we get better and attack that plan.”

Clemson has already addressed one of the issues. It is a year too late, but it did sign an all-conference defensive end in Will Heldt from the portal. He played the last two seasons at Purdue, appearing in all 24 games for the Boilermakers. He is credited with 56 tackles (10.0 for loss), 5.0 sacks and a fumble recovery he returned 16 yards for a touchdown.

Of course, there are more issues than that at defensive end. The tackling was poor at times, players were out of position or there were too many busted plays allowed.

In other words, there are a lot of things to fix.

“Every year is a life of its own. Each team is different,” Goodwin said.