By William Qualkinbush.
No. 23 Clemson hosts South Carolina State Saturday in Death Valley. How does the game look when we look at the numbers.
2: Number of defensive touchdowns scored by Clemson against South Carolina State last season. The Tigers returned a pair of interceptions for touchdowns in the game. Darius Robinson (graduated) and Martin Jenkins (injured) were responsible for both scores, and neither will be suiting up for the Tigers on Saturday. The Clemson defense was a big-play unit in 2013 that scored four touchdowns over the course of the season. Half of that productivity happened against this opponent.
5: Number of receivers who caught more than one pass against Georgia last week. Last season, nine different pass-catchers averaged more than one catch per game. Last week against the Bulldogs, there were nine total players who registered a catch. Spreading the football around has long been a staple of Chad Morris’ offense, and that staple would seem to be a possible theme in this game against a less talented defensive team overall. Expect the Tiger quarterbacks to spread the ball around deftly among their receivers in this one.
63: Points scored by South Carolina State in its opening game last week. Sure, it was against Benedict College, but the Bulldogs put on a clinic after halftime. The 49-point barrage turned a close game into a laugher and could signal potential problems for Clemson this week. The Tiger defense is licking its wounds after a fourth-quarter collapse in Athens and would love nothing more than coming out and making a statement against its FCS foe. But the Bulldogs’ uptempo style of play can be difficult to contain for 60 minutes, and the unit is more experienced than the one that burned the Clemson secondary for a couple of big-play touchdowns last year.
82: Number of players who saw the field for the Tigers against the Bulldogs last year. The NCAA scholarship limit is 85 players, and most teams typically carry somewhere around 110 bodies counting walk-ons. Given a few redshirts and injuries, it stands to reason that Dabo Swinney played virtually all of his able-bodied players against South Carolina State a season ago. A repeat of this phenomenon would not be surprising.
95: Completion percentage for Cole Stoudt in last year’s game against the Bulldogs. In examining Stoudt’s fitness to be the starting quarterback in 2014, many fans and media geeks pointed to this game—a 19-for-20 effort that saw Stoudt model the purest picture of perfection—as the main reason why he would be successful. While there were certainly other indicators, Stoudt’s best performance as Tajh Boyd’s backup probably was this game a season ago. Conventional wisdom says Stoudt will not be the high-efficiency option at quarterback this year, but Deshaun Watson or any of the other backups might be able to produce a similar output late in the ballgame.