On Saturday night, for the first time in nine years, Clemson won a game despite not scoring an offensive touchdown.
Thanks to a dominant defense and the clutch kicking of Jonathan Weitz, the 24th-ranked Tigers beat in-state rival South Carolina 16-7 at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, marking Clemson’s first win in a game in which its offense did not score a touchdown since 2014 vs. Louisville.
With the regular season in the books, Clemson (8-4) will now await its bowl destination. Following the victory over the Gamecocks (5-7), Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was asked what wasn’t working offensively that he’d like to see improve for his team in the bowl game.
“I don’t know if it was things not working,” Swinney said. “We probably played a little conservative as the game unfolded. We didn’t have a lot of time of possession. I don’t know what it was early. … We didn’t have the ball a whole lot early, and I don’t think we got in a good rhythm early.”
The Tigers had the ball 12 times overall in Saturday’s game, including six possessions that ended with punts, one that ended with an interception and three others that resulted in field goals by Weitz – which proved to be enough of an offensive output in the low-scoring affair.
“We did enough,” Swinney said. “It wasn’t a high-powered game.”
Clemson didn’t get much production in the passing game with only 100 yards through the air, but the Tigers were able to run for 219 yards to give them 319 total yards of offense. Clemson picked up 19 first downs and went 7-of-16 on third downs while possessing the ball for 38 minutes and averaging 4.4 yards per play on 73 total plays. The Tigers’ lone red zone trip came at the end of the game when they ran out the clock.
Swinney mentioned that the Gamecocks primarily played with an odd front defense in an effort to limit explosive plays and force the Tigers to sustain longer drives.
“That’s something they’ve been doing, really they’ve kind of went to a little bit more of that defense the last couple of games,” Swinney said. “Hadn’t really seen much of that, then the last couple games of the season, they’ve kind of gone to that, just I think trying to minimize some big plays and make you have to put some drives together, and we put some drives together, finished with some field goals.
“Missed a couple of plays, then obviously had the one turnover, which was an opportunity too. But we’ll watch the tape. Again, I think pretty conservative, but did what we needed to do to win.”
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