May 18, 2013

A Peek at 2013

December 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Chad Morris

Chad Morris

By and large Clemson fans and some of those that write about Clemson assume that 2013 is likely to be the Tigers year – the year the youth of 2011 matures, the year with a senior quarterback who will be in his third year of starting, the year of 4 returning starters on the offensive line and the year that the young defensive line of 2012 becomes a force with some key additions.

I look at it another way, albeit the glass half empty way. I see 40% of the snaps on the offensive line (Dalton Freeman), 70% of the running back snaps (Andre Ellington), 67% of the tight end snaps (Brandon Ford) and, assuming Nuk Hopkins turns pro, 56.3% of the wide receiver snaps departing.

While you can never overestimate the value of a veteran quarterback with nearly 2,000 career snaps under his belt, the questions remain about who is going to carry the ball and can Charone Peake and Martavis Bryant step up from role players to capable replacements for Nuk Hopkins and, to a lesser extent, Jaron Brown.

% of Snaps Returning and Lost in 2013


Returning Snaps –
The coaches rave about Ryan Norton at center, but with 277 career snaps (the equivalent of about 3 games) under his belt he has yet to prove himself on the field against ACC level competition – not to mention the likes of Georgia and South Carolina.

The loss of Freeman also means the dean of the offensive line becomes Brandon Thomas who has 1,461 less career snaps than Freeman does.

Sam Cooper performed admirably in spot situations in 2012. It’s difficult to imagine Cooper or Stanton Seckinger being as athletic as Ford, so many fans assume that the coaches will turn to redshirt freshman Jay Jay McCollough. The problem with that is, of course, McCollough has 0 snaps of experience.

Many feel the defense will get better with addition by subtraction, getting better simply because many players perceived as unproductive will be moving on. The Tigers lose only Mallaciah Goodman along the line and players like Grady Jarrett, DeShawn Williams and Vic Beasley gained valuable experience this season.

At linebacker Clemson loses the sparingly used (in 2012) Corico Hawkins and the productive Tig Willard. That’s 53.6% of the Tigers career linebacker snaps between those two.

The defensive backfield has been an enigma all season long. The Tigers lose 6,689 snaps of experience, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone despondent over the individual losses as the DBs were the focus of busted coverages, long plays, poor angles, bad tackling and general failure of the defense.

Just know this – whatever group takes the field in the Clemson defensive backfield in 2012 is going to be thousands of snaps less experienced than those that took the field this past fall. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.

Chandler Catanzaro has me feeling good about the place kicking duties, but there will be zero experience behind him.

Bradley Pinion punted only 9 times in 2012 and was inconsistent in that role much as he was on kickoffs – both areas that need improvement in 2013.

The numbers in the defensive backfield juxtaposed against their 2012 performance shows that evaluating returning starters can be overvalued in some instances.

On the other hand, a similar argument can be made against trumpeting “4 of 5 starters returning on the OL” when the one starter you lose has more snaps than any offensive lineman in school history, accounts for almost 40% of the line’s total experience and makes the offensive protection calls.

These numbers don’t include the inevitable attrition that happens every year during the offseason.  Guys transfer, give up football, face academic or life problems and sometimes get injured (Tony McNeal anyone?).

As with almost every analysis we do here, this should be used as one part of evaluating Clemson’s 2013 returnees with the main point being you can’t just look at numbers (i.e. “4 of 5 offensive linemen returning” or “only lose Jaron Brown and Nuk Hopkins from the WR corps”) and get a full picture of the returning (and departing) talent.

Filed Under: Clemson Football Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Looking Back – Game 8

October 26, 2012 by 3 Comments

Thoughts compiled while watching Clemson dismantle Wake Forest on Thursday night:

  • Nice to see you again, Sammy Watkins. Wow. 3 receptions of over 50 yards. School record for receiving yardage in a game.
  • Tajh Boyd has turned into a very effective runner gaining first downs on broken plays. Who would have thought that last year?
  • Martavis Bryant now has 364 yards and 4 touchdowns on 14 receptions – 26 yards per catch.
  • Like what I saw out of the defense for the most part, but where did those penalties come from? 9 penalties for 79 yards, most of the big ones on the defense.
  • Venables coaches to the very end, no matter what the score or game situation.
  • One area that I was not impressed with was the running game. I suggested yesterday that the offensive line should dominate Wake and that didn’t happen. Ellington’s longest run was 12 yards and he averaged 4.1 yards per carry. McDowell and Howard were not effective, either.
  • The left tackle spot concerns me a bit going forward.
  • Nice play by freshman Cortez Davis to cause a Wake fumble and not get noticed (in a bad way) during his first extensive playing time.
  • Good to see Bradley Pinion see some action both at punter and on kickoffs – he is after all the punter of the future and all 3 of Pinion’s kickoffs were touchbacks.
  • Adam Humphries as a shut down corner for a few plays. Really appreciate an unselfish player who will do whatever is asked to help the team.
  • When you don’t turn the ball over it is really difficult to lose with this Clemson offense.
  • 5 touchdowns in 6 red zone possessions = 5.83 points per possession.
  • Let’s be honest – Wake’s not good and their offensive line is banged up. Still 5 sacks is a pretty good night and Vic Beasley had 2 of those.
  • 8 games in Josh Watson has caused a fumble, recovered a fumble and blocked a kick.
Filed Under: Clemson Football Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Looking Back – Game 3

September 16, 2012 by 2 Comments
Martavis Bryant
  • Notes compiled while watching Clemson dispatch Furman 41-7 on Saturday.
  • Was it me or did the offense not look as crisp as they did against Ball State?  Perhaps it was the ball control played by Furman to start the game, but the tempo just didn’t seem “Clemson-like”, until the second drive of the second half.
  • Any hopes Ellington had of breaking the school rushing record likely died on the grass in the Valley yesterday afternoon.  Remember those that said “all” he needed was to average 115 yards per game?
  • Let’s hope the offensive linemen are healthy for this coming Saturday.
  • Major coverge issues in the secondary.  Major.

    • Martavis Bryant

  • How long before Bradley Pinion is the punter?  It won’t happen this week because of being a freshman and the game being on the road in Tallahassee, but my guess is that in the coming weeks Pinion will win the job – if he remains consistent.  Pinion has a huge upside.
  • Sammy Watkins had an incredible burst on his touchdown run.
  • Anyone else notice that Charone Peake disappeared yesterday?  He didn’t have a pass thrown his way until the last minute or so of the 3rd quarter (when the score was 34-7) and ended the day with 1 catch for -1 yard.  I get it, Sammy was back, but still a bit curious.
  • In a year and 3 games Martavis Bryant has 11 catches for 282 yards (25.6 per catch) and 4 touchdowns.
Filed Under: Clemson Football Tagged With: , , , ,

Analyzing the ACC Kickoff Specialists

August 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A message board comment sparked this post. The comment was that Spencer Benton was a “dominant” kick off specialist.

Dominant is a strong word and also a word that doesn’t come to mind when I think of Benton kicking off for Clemson. Words I do think of include “solid”, “dependable” and “steady”.

Dominant? We aren’t even sure he’s the best on his own team as there is some talk of true freshman Bradley Pinion pushing Benton for the job.

As is typical here, I decided to put the “Benton dominant” claim to the test and also as typical here, I like to remind everyone that while this is a stat focused site, there are other aspects that need to be considered when ranking players.

That said, the numbers below support exactly what I thought, namely that Benton is a “good” kickoff man, but hardly dominant.

KOs –
Of the ACCs regular kickoff specialists Benton is third (and a distant third at that) in percentage of kick offs that result in touchbacks and near the middle of the pack in the percentage of kicks that end up out of bounds.

It’s safe to say Benton has the experience factor in his favor, is a solid, dependable kick off man and most likely will hold Pinion at bay, at least for the short term. But dominant? Hardly.

Filed Under: Clemson Football Tagged With: ,

Setting the bar for the new punter

August 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ve long been of the mind that a better method of analyzing a punters performance is needed. Yards per punt, net average and a raw number of punts inside the 20 seem to be heavily dependent on factors largely out of the punters control.

For example, a punter’s yard per punt average and net punting average is affected by a coaches decision to punt from the opponent’s 35 yard line, thereby maxing out his possible yardage at 35 and his net could be as low as 15 with a touchback.

Similarly, punts are often boomed high and deep (“out kicking the coverage”) only to see the punt return defense give up a huge return. Is that the punter’s fault?

Finally, a raw number of punts inside the 20 is highly dependent on how many chances the punter has to a) punt and b) where on the field he punts from. Teams with consistently poor offenses are going to end up punting from their end of the field, often deep in their own territory, more often than teams with better offenses. This means the punter for the bad offense is likely to have less attempts where it is likely to be downed inside the 20.

It seems logical to me that we should judge a punter on a few criteria, namely how he compares to his peers with regards to average per punt; what percentage of punts are inside the opponents 20 (adjusted for punts that have the “chance” to go inside the 20); and the yards per punt adjusted for potential yards and touchbacks.

  • The percentage of punts that match or exceed the average of the top 100 punters in the nation. In 2011, 55.4% of Dawson Zimmerman’s punts equaled or exceeded the average of the top 100 punters.
  • The number of punts inside the opponents 20 divided by the opportunities to punt inside the 20. For this metric I used the average punt of the top 100 punters (rounded to 41 yards). This means for every punt from the Clemson 39 moving forward Zimmerman had the opportunity to put the ball inside the opponents 20 with an “average” punt. For 2011 Zimmerman put 20 punts inside the 20 on 39 chances (51.3%).
  • The yards per punt divided by the potential yardage for the punt minus the yards lost on a touchback (20). For instance, a 50 yard punt that results in a touchback will only garner a score of .600 (30 gained yards of field position), while a 42 yard punt from midfield will score a .840 (42 yards of gained field position). Zimmerman scored a .631 in this category.
  • Adding the sums of the three criteria and dividing by 3 will give you the punters efficiency. Using this formula Zimmerman had an efficiency of .566 for the 2011 season.


Punter 4.2 –
The downside is I have nothing and no one to compare this number to in order to understand if this is a good efficiency or a bad efficiency.  Therefore, I will use .566 as a benchmark for Bradley Pinion and/or Spencer Benton in 2012.

Filed Under: Clemson Football Tagged With: ,

Analyzing Clemson’s 2012 Punting Experience

July 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For the first time in over 3 years the Tigers face the prospect of breaking in a new punter.

Dawson Zimmerman departs with 192 career punts and a 41.1 career yard per punt average, leaving only Spencer Benton’s 2 punts last year as experience.

This is obviously an area of great concern as Zimmerman grew into a steady and solid, if unspectacular, punter.


Punting –

Benton is an unknown, as is freshman Bradley Pinion. Benton averaged 38.2 yards on 6 punts during the spring game while Pinion averaged 44.3 on 8 punts.

Benton comes out of the spring atop the depth chart, but my guess is Pinion will get an opportunity in the fall.

Whoever ends up punting in the fall for Clemson will be inexperienced at the Division 1 level and that is a major concern for the Tigers.

Filed Under: Clemson Football Tagged With: , ,

Thoughts from the Spring Game

April 15, 2012 by 1 Comment
Courtesy OrangeandWhite.com

There’s nothing new or earth shattering here, you’ve probably read similar reviews by now, but that won’t stop me from adding my two cents.  Yeah, it was the spring game and the team was split, but that doesn’t mean observations can’t be made.

Courtesty OrangeandWhite.com

  • Tajh Boyd was unimpressive and inconsistent.  As Tajh goes so goes the Clemson offense.  Boyd made huge strides last year and needs to keep that momentum going in 2012.  He’s a junior on paper, but somewhere in the back of my mind “sophomore slump” (it is his second year as a starter) lurks.
  • Mike Bellamy had his moments, but once again fumbled.  Still there’s no denying the talent and home run ability Bellamy provides.  I love D.J. Howard and Zac Brooks is going to be a player, but the Tigers need Bellamy to contribute.  I was criticized for saying the same thing last year, but to me it’s painfully obvious.  Oh, by the way, Bellamy averaged 6.9 yards per carry on the day.
  • Brandon Ford is no Dewayne Allen, but he’ll be just fine and perhaps an All ACC Candidate.
  • Is there a better group of WRs in the nation?  Amazing how Jeff Scott has gone from an idiot to a savant in two short years.  One word:  Talent.  I’ll be interested to see the position rankings when the preseason mags hit the street.  If the Clemson WRs aren’t in the top 3 in the nation, it’s a sham.
  • The OL is a work in progress as it seems it is every year.  The difference is the young guys have talent.  It may take some time to grow them, but there is hope.  Injuries along the OL are always a concern and they happen every year, so developing backups is imperative.  The backups from last year saw precious little playing time and Clemson will pay for that early.
  • The DL acquitted themselves fairly well, but…they were going against an average OL that was split between teams.  Still concerned here, especially with depth.
  • The linebackers looked much improved.  Whether it’s Venables, his simplified scheme or simply maturity (or a combination) it was nice to see the LBs factor into many plays.
  • The DBs had to play against the best receivers they will see all year and that led to some tough results.  Travis Blanks has a future ahead of him, if for no other reason than he tackled well, something that has been missing over recent years for Clemson.
  • Speaking of tackling, the defense as a whole did a much better job in wrapping up and form tackling.  The Venables effect?  Who knows what will happen in truly live situations, but it was encouraging.
  • Bradley Pinion was as advertised.  Let’s hope it continues when the lights are shining bright.
  • Chandler Catanzaro has had a great spring by all accounts and I don’t really fault him for missing two 50 yarders at the end of the game before winning it with a 45 yarder.  However, it leaves a lingering concern about what tends to happen in the clutch.

Filed Under: Clemson Football Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,