ATLANTA- Coming into Saturday’s season-opening contest against top-ranked Georgia in the AFLAC Kickoff Game in Atlanta, there was a lot of optimism surrounding the 14th-ranked Tigers.
With a lot of the players on the roster now having a year in Garrett Riley’s offense, including quarterback Cade Klubnik, expectations were for this Clemson team to compete for an ACC Title and a spot in the College Football Playoff.
The Bulldogs would ultimately squash all of that optimism in one afternoon, as Kirby Smart’s team used a dominating second half to cruise to a 34-3 victory over Dabo Swinney’s Tigers.
One game in and this team still had a lot of the same struggles that were seen last season on the offensive side of the ball. An inability to stretch the field with the passing attack and pick up the chunk yards allowed the Bulldogs to key on the perimeter game and limit Klubnik to just 142 yards through the air. Only once did the junior signal caller complete a pass of more than 20 yards, and that was a 36-yard completion to Antonio Williams in the first half on a drive that the offense failed to put any points on the board.
Despite the struggles, Clemson went to the half trailing only 6-0, as the Tigers defense held Carson Beck and the Dawgs offense in check over the first 30 minutes. However, the second half was an entirely different story, as Georgia outscored the Tigers 28-3 over the final two quarters.
“First of all, congrats to Georgia,” Swinney said. “It was a good first half. Tough, hard-fought first half. Then they just freaking kicked our tails in the second half. Congrats to them. They’re a great team. They’ve been a great team. They showed in the third and fourth quarter what it looks like.”
Throughout fall camp, Swinney’s mantra has been “finish” and the head coach came into Saturday’s contest confident in his team. However, after Saturday’s result it’s back to square one for an offense that just can’t find its footing.
“Just really disappointed,” Swinney added. “Biggest thing is when you don’t finish, again I’ve talked a lot about it, thought we did some good things in the first half. There will be some things on tape. But you get to play four quarters. We didn’t do that.”
One of the Tigers’ goals each season is to win the opener and they have now failed to do so in back-to-back seasons. Three times in the last four seasons Clemson has failed to win its opener. The 31-point loss to Georgia is the second worst for Clemson under Swinney, only topped by West Virginia’s 33-point win over the Tigers in the 2012 Orange Bowl.
For anyone looking for fault, Swinney said the buck stops with him, as the longtime head coach took full responsibility for the lopsided defeat.
“Biggest thing, when you get beat like that, that’s on the head coach,” said Swinney. “That’s on me, so… That’s just complete ownership of just an absolute crap second half. Really disappointed. But I’ve done it long enough. Sometimes you get your butt kicked, and we did today. That’s not what we came here to do. But you got to give Georgia credit. We got to move on, we got to learn from it.”
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