CLEMSON — Getting Clemson’s defense fixed has been a little more challenging than Tom Allen expected.

While the Tigers have shown some improvement in areas, the standard in place is still not being met.

When evaluating what he’s seen during Clemson’s disappointing 3-4 start, Allen insists the struggles aren’t due to a lack of effort.

“I don’t think it’s a lack of effort,” Allen said. “They’re playing hard. If they weren’t playing hard, I’d call them out and call what it was.”

After back-to-back road wins over North Carolina and Boston College, which saw the defense surrender just 20 points total, it appeared Allen’s unit was finally starting to get over the hump. However, in Saturday’s loss to LSU, the Tigers repeatedly failed to come up with stops in the game’s biggest moments, while also surrendering too many chunk plays.

“The last bye week until now, I feel like we made a lot of growth the last few weeks, and we need to see it show up consistently in this (SMU) game, and we didn’t see it consistently,” Allen added. “Saw it a lot of the time, but it has to be all of the time.”

Clemson now ranks No. 42 in total defense (337.6 YPG), No. 46 in scoring defense (20.89 PPG), No. 78 in passing defense (227.9), and No. 112 in rush defense. Just not the numbers that were expected coming into the season, considering what is on the roster.

While Allen isn’t seeing a lack of effort, what he does see is a group that just isn’t playing with a lot of confidence.

“Really, to me it’s more about just confidence in your technique, confidence in what we’re doing schematically, and just continuing to work on that,” Allen added. “You can’t feel weary of just doing things the right way. You keep going after ‘this is the standard,’ and we keep chasing after that standard every single day. We don’t let up. You may make modifications to how you do it, but you don’t alter the ultimate goal, which is to be a physical football team that creates takeaways and plays elite defense.”