Clemson: Why we could lose

Imagine if you will Georgia's first play from scrimmage Saturday night in Clemson: We've won the toss and made the obvious choice of taking the ball. We take the ball, right?

Hello, is this thing on?

Yes, it is time for a dark place rant. I'd like to think we take the ball. If we do, what plays do we run? The strength of Clemson's defense is their front seven.  They return three starters from a Dline that did ok, with a couple of very bad performances (Georgia Tech and FSU).  On top of that, they are in year 2 of Brent Venable's 4-3 defense. They look to use athleticism up front and get runners to deviate from their lanes and into the arms of the LBs.

So, do we open up the playbook and come out passing? What does that do for us from a game management perspective? Clemson loves to run as many plays as possible. They ran over 80 plays per game, compared to UGA's 66 plays per game. Don't we need to run the ball, both to allow the deep shots and to keep the clock moving? The offense is well aware that part of our defensive success will come from managing the time of possession battle:

But even if the defense struggles, the feeling is that the offense doesn’t necessarily need to be scoring in order to help. There is the time-of-possession factor, which will not only provide time to rest and regroup, but mitigate the number of possessions.
“We help the defense out by holding the football,” junior center David Andrews said. “I know they appreciate when we go out and have an eight or 10-play-plus drive. They can get fresh, go over stuff.”

I just worry that we get so cute worrying with TOP that we forget that part of this becomes scoring points. No wonder Mike Bobo is going bald.

Then, we have the defense. I mentioned worries about practice time the other day. Coach has mentioned it. We'll be playing guys that are either 1) not the first stringers, or 2) guys that haven't practiced that much at speed. While #1 is ok, since we do have talent, is it preferable to #2, considering who we are facing?

The worst possible situation for Georgia is to come out flat and conservative on offense. To me, we have to push the tempo a bit and keep Clemson's defense off balance. Because we cannot afford a couple of three and outs early. Can we come back from three scores down on someone? Yes, definitely, but not if we spot them two and then get to trading them back and forth.

TD

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