Hafley Believes Clemson Is ‘Inches Away’ From Clicking
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)Staff Writer
The sky is falling in Clemson. Not really. But it feels that way.
The No. 25 Tigers are ranked lower than they have been since Week 7 of 2014. They’ve yet to score more than three touchdowns against an FBS opponent. They’ve been bitten by the injury bug. And their offensive line looks out of whack.
In all likelihood, Clemson’s streak of six straight College Football Playoff appearances is over. Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley, however, doesn’t think the 2-2 Tigers are far off from getting back on track.
“Guys, they’re just like inches away,” Hafley said Tuesday. “I mean [DJ Uiagalelei is] throwing passes that, gosh, they’re just misses, or they just dropped them, or the back just missed a cutback.”
That’s the message Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is championing, anyway. The longtime Tigers frontman told reporters Tuesday that “sometimes to make progress you have to go backwards.” This week has been about returning to the fundamentals: technique, ball security, cleaning up missed assignments.
“Nobody wants to hear it, but, the reality is, we’re two or three less mistakes from being 4-0,” Swinney said. “We wouldn’t be much better as a team, but y’all would be asking me different questions. We stunk it up last Saturday but still had a chance to win in double overtime.
“It’s not that far from the penthouse to the outhouse.”
Swinney’s players haven’t been through this kind of adversity before. Linebacker James Skalski—notably, battling a shoulder injury right now—has been in Death Valley since 2016, and all he knows is ACC Championships and national title contention.
That said, Swinney has been through some ups and downs. Not as much recently but at the start of his Clemson career. In 2010, Swinney’s second year as the Tigers’ full-time head coach, they went 6-6. The following season, Clemson stormed out to an 8-0 start before losing three of its final five games, namely a 70-33 Orange Bowl to West Virginia.
He mentioned, too, that the 2020 campaign offered its fair share of uncertainty with Trevor Lawrence being sidelined with COVID-19 for two games, and the Tigers losing to Notre Dame on the road.
Hafley admires the program Swinney has developed. He made that evident Tuesday.
“I kind of look up to him,” Hafley said. “What he’s done at Clemson and where he’s taken it and built it and stayed there and the consistency? I mean, I think it’s awesome, rather than a guy that probably could have jumped around here or there.”
Hafley applauded the entire Clemson coaching staff and declared that the Tigers are much better than their record indicates.
“Just turn on the tape and watch ’em,” he said.
Clemson lost a ton of production on the offensive side of the ball, with the departure of Lawrence, all-world running back Travis Etienne, and wide receivers Cornell Powell and Amari Rodgers, among others. The thought was, plug in Uiagalelei, who starred in Lawrence’s absence last season, and the Tigers will be fine. That hasn’t been the case.
Offensive coordinator Tony Elliott, who has been Clemson’s primary play-caller since 2014, is under fire for a scheme that ESPN analyst, and former NFL quarterback, Robert Griffin III called “archaic” during the Tigers’ double-overtime loss at North Carolina State last week.
The Athletic took a crack at why the Tigers’ offense has been so sluggish in 2021 this week, and, ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky told the outlet that Elliott and Co. rely too much on the RPO and too little on play-action as well as pre-snap motion. In other words, Clemson’s offense has become predictable with one-to-two read pass plays and screens that are no longer as potent without a guy like Etienne in the backfield.
But the talent is there, and that’s what Hafley was alluding to. Uiagalelei, the No. 3 overall Class of 2020 prospect, has a cannon for an arm. The 6-foot-4, 250-pound dual threat picked apart the Eagles’ defense in the second half of the teams’ roller coaster game last year.
Uiagalelei was 30-of-41 for 342 passing yards and two touchdowns, in addition to a score on the ground, in then-No. 1 Clemson’s 32-28 come-from-behind victory.
“He's enormous,” Hafley said. “I would expect him to run the ball against us. He has about as strong of an arm as I've ever seen. It looks like he's throwing 98 mile-per-hour fastballs. And when he's on the run, he can do it. He can do it in the pocket.”
Uiagalelei has once again flashed that arm strength this year, perhaps a little too much, though. He’s missing the easy throws, or “layups,” as Swinney says. As a result, his completion percentage is hovering around 56% right now. He’s also thrown a trio of interceptions and has logged 328 fewer passing yards in four games than he did in a bit more than two last year.
Most of the time, he’s been throwing to Justyn Ross, a preseason All-ACC wide receiver who missed the 2020 season with a congenital fusion in his spine. Ross has commanded 30.6% of Clemson’s receptions this year (22) and 31.9% of the Tigers’ receiving yards (216).
Hafley said he has experience going up against Ross, who he faced when Ohio State played Clemson in the 2019 College Football Playoff semifinals. He also shouted out Joseph Ngata, who leads the team with 222 receiving yards, EJ Williams and Frank Ladson Jr.
Tigers running back Will Shipley, a four-star true freshman, is out for the next three-to-four weeks with a knee injury, so it will likely be Kobe Pace getting the bulk of the work behind a shaky O-Line this weekend. Clemson ranks 99th in rushing offense right now.
Regardless of Clemson’s bevy of injuries and offensive woes, Hafley isn’t flinching. And he’s made sure to watch last year’s film extensively.
“There's mistakes we made in that game that if we don't fix, I'm sure they'll exploit,” Hafley said. “So we gotta watch it hard and make sure we clean up. Clearly we need to play better than we did last year. We were up, and we lost, and we blew a big lead.”
In Hafley’s eyes, it all comes down to execution. He said “there was no magic” to BC jumping out to a 28-10 lead. Quite simply, BC executed at a higher level in the first half, and Clemson executed at a higher level in the second half, according to Hafley.
BC is searching for its first win over an opponent ranked in the AP Top 25 since 2014. If the Eagles accomplish that feat, they’ll hand Clemson its home loss since 2016 and probably book their own ticket for the AP Poll.
“Last year, everyone was getting excited because we were competing in games,” Hafley said. “But we weren’t winning them. When you’re in a close game like that, you have to finish it off.”
