Since 2011, Clemson’s offense has been one of the most explosive in college football.
That year head coach Dabo Swinney changed things up and brought in Chad Morris to run his offense. Since then, the Tigers have been rolling, averaging 37.7 points and 481.6 yards per game, while posting a 97-15 overall record.
Morris left Clemson at the end of the 2014 season to become a head coach, but the offense has not missed a beat and actually has gotten even more refined. Since the start of the 2015 season, the Tigers have averaged 38.9 points and 494.8 yards per game while going 55-4 overall.
Why is Clemson’s offense so good?
It’s the quarterback play.
Like a lot of offenses these days, the quarterback has a lot of responsibilities, which has not always been the case in college football. Today’s offenses are catered to the skill set of the quarterback and Clemson has been blessed with three All-American quarterbacks since 2011.
Tajh Boyd went 32-8 as a starter at Clemson and threw for a Clemson record 11,904 yards in his four years at Clemson. (File Photo/The Clemson Insider)
Tajh Boyd went 32-8 in his three years as a starting quarterback, while leading the Tigers to their first ACC Championship in 20 years. He also helped Clemson to back-to-back top 10 final rankings in 2012 and 2013, the first time that happened since the late 1980s.
Personally, Boyd lit up the opposition as he threw for 11,904 yards, still the most in Clemson history. He also holds the ACC record for touchdown passes (107) and total touchdowns in a career (133). In 2012, he became the first Clemson quarterback in history to earn First-Team All-American honors and was named the ACC Player of the Year.
Deshaun Watson followed Boyd in 2014 and he picked up where his predecessor left off. Watson was nearly unbeatable, going 32-3 in his three years as the starting quarterback. He became Clemson’s first Heisman Trophy Finalist in 2015 and then repeated as such in 2016.
Watson also won the Davey O’Brien and Manning Awards in both seasons as the nation’s best quarterback, as well as winning the Johnny Unitas Award in 2016 and the ACC Player of the Year Award in 2015. He is the only Clemson quarterback to be named an All-American two times, including a first-team honor in 2015.
The Gainesville, Georgia native also led Clemson to its first national championship in 35 years in 2016 and to back-to-back national title games appearances. Watson threw for 10,163 yards and 90 touchdowns in his career, while completing a school-record 67.4 percent of his passes. His 116 total touchdowns rank second to Boyd in ACC history. He also ran for another 1,931 yards and scored 26 rushing touchdowns.
Trevor Lawrence threw 30 touchdown passes as a true freshman in 2018. (Bart Boatwright/The Clemson Insider)
Trevor Lawrence has now taken over as the next big quarterback at Clemson. Last year, he became the first freshman since 1985 to lead his team to a national championship. The ACC Rookie of the Year in 2018, played in all 15 games and went 11-0 as a starter.
Lawrence threw for 3,280 yards and 30 touchdowns. He completed 65.2 percent of his passes and threw just four interceptions. He led the ACC in touchdown passes, passing efficiency and fewest interceptions thrown, and he was just a true freshman.
Having good quarterback play is not new to Clemson. The Tigers have had some great signal-callers over the years like Steve Fuller, Homer Jordan, Woody Dantzler and Charlie Whitehurst.
Can you imagine the numbers those four guys would have put up in this day and age of college football and in this Clemson offense? They were all head of their time.
However, in each occasion, offenses started gravitating towards more and more roles for the quarterback than just handing the ball off on first and second down and then throwing it on third down.
Fuller became the first real dual-threat quarterback in ACC history. Not only was Fuller good at running the triple option in Clemson’s Power I-formation, but he also could throw the football on the run, which is why he was a 2-time ACC Player of the Year and was Clemson first ever All-American quarterback in 1978.
Jordan got even more freedom than Fuller in Danny Ford’s offense, which played a big role in why Clemson won the 1981 National Championship. Jordan could run and throw the ball with the best of them and his ability to do both well frightened defensive coordinators.
Besides winning the 1981 National Championship, Jordan led the Tigers to a 27-6-1 record as a starting quarterback and to back-to-back ACC Championships in 1981 and 1982. He was the ACC’s First-Team All-Conference quarterback in 1981.
Woodrow Dantzler was a first-team All-ACC quarterback in 2001 and finished his Clemson career with nearly 9,000 total yards and 68 touchdowns. (File Photo/Clemson Athletic Communications)
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the spread offenses took off in college football and with it came more and more freedom for quarterbacks in these up-tempo offenses. Dantzler was a pioneer to what we see quarterbacks doing in today’s offenses.
Dantzler became the first FBS player to throw for 2,000 yards and rush for 1,000 yards in the same season. He actually did it in back-to-back years. He became a First-Team All-ACC quarterback his senior year, the first Clemson quarterback to do so since Jordan in 1981, after throwing for 2,578 yards and 21 touchdowns, while also running for 1,061 yards and 10 touchdowns. He led the Tigers in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns that season.
Before Whitehurst, Boyd and Watson, Dantzler owned most of Clemson’s records by a quarterback and is the only quarterback listed on Clemson’s all-time rushing list, as he sits ninth all-time with 2,761 yards. His 27 rushing touchdowns rank 10th all-time in Clemson history and No. 1 by a quarterback.
Whitehurst was Trevor Lawrence before there was Trevor Lawrence. Many consider Whitehurst to be Clemson’s first true pocket passer.
He is currently second in Clemson history in career pass attempts (1,368) and completions (817). Whitehurst, who did not grow his long hair until he got in the NFL, is third all-time in passing yards (9,665) and passing touchdowns (49). He was named second-team All-ACC quarterback as a senior in 2005.