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Gator Bowl: Nebraska vs Clemson - More on Tiger Defensive Stats

Consider this a follow -up to yesterday's article about Clemson's defense and the fact that they haven't faced an offense no where as good as our Huskers this season.

It's difficult to measure how good a defense is across conferences and without looking further it leads to the types of comments such as left by site member Teamster

The Clemson blogs have been saying in recent weeks that the Big12 doesn’t play good defense. That’s why they score so much on each other. Their argument is that the ACC has more defensive speed. And that the Big12 teams can’t score at will on the ACC.

Comments like this are what make the bowl games so interesting, even in in the minor bowls. You find teams playing each other that would never schedule each other during the regular season, i.e., the upcoming Gator Bowl marks only the second time Nebraska and Clemson will have played each other. The key here is you don't know what's going to happen until the teams are on the field.

Back to the statistics, as I stated, Clemson hasn't faced an offense as good as Nebraska's all season. I wondered if we could learn anymore about their defense by looking at what they did against their own conference and their own schedule.

What we have here is how the Tigers did against the offenses they faced, looking at whether or not they held their own opponents under their season averages for rushing and passing:

Opponent Rushing Avg YPG vs. Clemson Difference
Alabama 196.46 239 +43
NC State 125.50 136 +10
Maryland 134.50 123 -11
Wake Forest 121.38 156 +35
Georgia Tech 282.33 207 -75
Boston College 143 120 -23
Florida State 179.08 266 +87
Duke 106.17 83 -23
Virginia 96.58 30 -66
South Carolina 98.33 92 -6

 


 

Opponent Passing Avg YPG vs. Clemson Difference
Alabama 170.69 180 +10
NC State 200.83 152 -49
Maryland 207.42 173 -34
Wake Forest 186.92 186 -1
Georgia Tech 95 91 -4
Boston College 175.46 116 -59
Florida State 192.77 153 -40
Duke 196.67 85 -112
Virginia 203.17 160 -43
South Carolina 218.50 212 -7

 

What we see here is a Tiger defense that consistently held their opponents under their season average in the passing game.

Some other things to chew on:

- Clemson's defensive coordinator - Vic Koenning - resigned (or got fired or asked to leave, however you want to look at it), so the Tigers enter the Gator Bowl apparently with Dabo Swinney acting as DC. Keep that in mind.

- Most of the ACC runs a pro-style type offense, with the exception of Georgia Tech who runs the triple option, and Florida State, who runs elements of the spread and zone read. Wake Forest tends to run more misdirection than most teams.

- At the beginning of the season, the key word about Nebraska's offense was "multiple', and we've utilized that pretty well this season. Nebraska can run a huge variety of plays and formations -wide receiver screens, the zone read or the speed option out of the shotgun, middle screens, and if all those don't work, we still have Joker and Ducky.

- The bottom line is that Clemson comes into this game needing a game plan to stop our offense, an offense unlike anything they've seen this season. Their defensive coordinator is gone. You think their new head coach Dabo Swinney might be stretched a bit thin? You think he's going to have enough time to get his staff together, get his team together for a bowl game, and then figure out how to stop a multiple-based offense?

0 recs  |  Comment 3 comments |

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DC

Dabo won’t be acting as our DC, he’s an offensive guy. He deals directly in the play-calling.

LB coaches David Blackwell and Ron West are splitting the DC duties for the bowl game. Blackwell will be the one calling most plays from the press box however.

by DrB on Dec 29, 2008 5:13 PM CST reply actions   0 recs

yeah

found that today.…. what do you think of it?

The statement below can’t make you feel good about the situation:

“I think every coach looks forward to that day when they can kind of call their own shots,” Blackwell said. “I’ve been in the coaching business for 15 years and this is my first opportunity to call a game and it’s something I’m really looking forward to.”

Go Big Red Nebraska!
Our Cobs Are Bigger Than Yours!
Corn Nation!

by corn blight on Dec 29, 2008 7:08 PM CST up reply actions   0 recs

Blackwell

Blackwell came in highly-touted as a great recruiter at Pitt on what was a pretty good defense under Paul Rhoads, however his LB recruits never really impressed me on the field. However, we’ve never really recruited awesome LBs since Bowden has been here.

This year a weakness from the preseason talk was our depth at LB and a couple of them really stood out, particularly Maye, and they improved all year.

Blackwell is noted as being more aggressive in playcalling than VK, so I’m fine with it for now. We’ll see how he does…..but I’m betting you’ll see more of him with Rhoads in the future.

by DrB on Dec 29, 2008 9:44 PM CST reply actions   0 recs

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