It was good to see this Clemson football team finally having a little fun again in Saturday’s win over North Carolina.

“As we always say, the fun is in the winning,” Dabo Swinney said afterwards. “It was good to see this team win a game.”

In all honesty, that is a really bad Tar Heels team, but the Tigers did exactly what they are supposed to be doing against terrible teams. They blew their doors off from the onset.

With a road trip to Boston College up next, and Clemson currently a 12.5-point road favorite, now this team needs to show it can put together solid performances in back-to-back weeks.

How Bad Is UNC

You can make the argument that the Tar Heels are the worst team in the Power-4 and it was evident from the coin toss on. North Carolina won the opening toss and elected to defer. Really? After the Clemson defense has shown all season that they can’t stop an offense on the opening drive of the game? What a blunder.

Instead, Clemson got the ball first, and on the very first play from scrimmage, the Tigers went with some trickeration, as Antonio Williams connected with TJ Moore on a 75-yard touchdown pass, the beginning of a scoring barrage that saw Garrett Riley’s offense score 28 points in the first quarter.

The Heels are the epitome of what a team that is fully checked out looks like. They’re just downright bad. And everywhere.

Watching Bill Belichick on the sideline gives you an idea about how things work behind the scenes. He just stands there by himself, with no one getting within five yards of him. Only once throughout the game did I see one of the members of his staff actually conversing with him face-to-face, and that was late in the second half, long after the game was over. I never did see him talking to the first player.

Complimentary Football

Swinney was extremely pleased to finally see his team playing some complementary football. That first half was about as good as it gets.

It wasn’t because the staff got overly cute. Outside of the double pass on the first play, it was a lot of what Swinney likes to call “hitting the layups.” Simple pitch and catch. Cade Klubnik did a really good job of getting the ball to his playmakers in space and letting them do the work. The senior quarterback was content with hitting his checkdown, which also resulted in a couple of big plays.

While some might not be happy that it didn’t continue into the second half, let’s see that for what it was. Clemson totally took the foot off the gas. The starting offense only got one possession in that third quarter before the backups started rolling in.

Klubnik Playing Free

It was good to see Klubnik finally playing to the level that was expected coming into the season. He was playing free and for the most part, was seeing the field pretty well. That has not always been the case in the previous four games.

Even on the weird-looking play where Klubnik tried to throw one into Bryant Wesco in triple coverage, the ball was dropped right into the breadbasket. While the design of that one left a lot to be desired, the pass was fully on target. It was just one of two incompletions he threw all afternoon.

Defense Takes a Step

It was far from perfect, but Clemson’s defense was much better against the Heels. Sure, some of that is due to playing against an inept offense, but some of those guys were playing with the kind of fire we just haven’t seen a whole lot of this season.

Defensive coordinator Tom Allen decided to come out of the box and call the game from the field, and at least for one week, it worked. We saw some 4-2-5, some 4-3, some 3-4, and some 3-3-5. A lot of tinkering. We even saw Jahiem Lawson lining up inside.

Brutal truth, there are still some things that were left exposed, particularly in pass coverage, it’s just North Carolina was not able to take advantage.

However, anytime you hold an opposing offense to just 78 total yards in the opening half, that should be celebrated.

Backup Quarterback

We finally got a look at backup Chris Vizzina, and the results left a lot to be desired. He finished just 6-of-11 for 39 yards. In fact, he was fortunate that a couple of those throws weren’t picked off. Now we know why the staff never really considered inserting Vizzina when Klunbik was struggling.

Photo by Bart Boatwright