Long way from Auburn

Thirty minutes in at Auburn, looks of disbelief permeated the press box with Clemson up 17-3 at half.

I sought out several Clemson folks who have been around a long time and asked them to recall the last time the Tigers looked that good in a half.

Georgia Tech 2006? Florida State 2003? Florida State 2005? Further back than that?

Who knows. The point is, that precise moment halfway through the Auburn game might've been the most promising, confidence-inspiring period at Clemson in a long, long time.

The Tigers pounded Auburn with the run. They made huge plays in the passing game. And they basically shut down a super coordinator (Gus Malzahn) and a kid who has since become Superman (Cam Newton).

Since that point, Auburn has risen to No. 1 while Clemson has regressed to abject mediocrity. And that regression has to be torture for fans who were in such ecstasy during those first 30 minutes in Auburn.

The most impressive thing to me about that first half was 1) the complete fearlessness with which the team approached going into the heart of SEC country, and 2) the fact that, in Game 3 of the post-Spiller era, the offense did not appear to miss Spiller much at all.

What we have seen since then has been so much different.

After an open date, the team came out confused/sloppy/uninspired/lethargic (take your pick) in a nine-point home loss to Miami.

At North Carolina, we saw self-impaling mistakes on defense. We saw an offense that went 40 minutes without reaching the Tar Heels' end zone.

On Saturday, after a week spent hearing from players how there was no way they'd overlook Boston College, we watched the Tigers' defensive line get beat up for a half. We watched the Tigers' offensive line get owned for large stretches by a defensive line that had lost its best player.

And yes, we watched an offense that often seems lost without the best player in college football in 2009.

I have covered Clemson football on a daily basis since 2004. Over that period, I have learned two things: Never crown this team, and never bury it. Because once you do either, this team will prove you wrong. So from that perspective, I'm not going to sit here and totally dismiss the Tigers' chances of turning things around, and even getting back to the ACC title game.

But things do not look good right now, especially with the Tigers' best player (Andre Ellington) on the shelf for weeks. We don't know exactly how long he'll be out, but it appears certain he'll be out for N.C. State and Florida State.

I don't think it's a stretch to think that even the most ardent supporters of Dabo Swinney are having some strong doubts about his ability to take this program to a championship level. That's what he was hired to do. He was not hired to rebuild a sunken program. He was not hired to get this team close one year, then regress dramatically the next.

This is what he said in late October of 2008, a few days before he bagged his first win as interim coach in a 27-21 victory at Boston College:

"We're not a broken team. We're not an old jalopy, hoopty car that we put a paint job on and some new rims. We've got everything on this car. We've got a six-disc CD changer, we've got a moon roof, power windows, cruise control, nice paint job. When you see this car, you're going to say, 'Boy, I'd like to drive that one.'

"But somewhere along the way, we've caught a flat tire. We've gotten low on gas. I'm trying to fill this tank back up and put some air back in the tires, because this is a good football team."

At halftime last week at Boston College, Swinney was incensed. He told the intrepid Mike Hogewood that his defensive players needed to "grow up" after getting pushed around and failing to tackle in the first half. Seven of the Tigers' starters on defense are seniors or juniors. The two-deep on the defensive line features a senior, five juniors and a sophomore.

Swinney talks often about "changing the culture" around here, and I believe what he's talking about is getting his players confident enough to make the plays they haven't been making in close games. The close-game struggles were a trend later in Bowden's years, and they have continued under Swinney. Clemson is 2-9 under him in games decided by a touchdown or less, and 7-20 in those games since 2005.

The best this team can do during the regular season is finish 8-4. A 5-7 season is very much in play. I'm almost in disbelief when I write those facts, because this team as presently constituted should not be in this position. It just shouldn't.

We saw how good this team can be in the first half at Auburn, and we have seen precious little of it since.

They say things aren't as good as they seem and not as bad as they seem, and things definitely weren't as good as they seemed after 30 minutes at Auburn.

Are things as bad as they seem now, at 4-4 and two days removed from an unsightly loss?

Maybe not. But it ain't good. Not good at all.

Moving on to some Monday linkage...

Lotta similarities right now between Clemson and Georgia. Doggie fans are looking at their team and saying: We're too talented to be losing this many games.

Mark Bradley of the AJC says Georgia's coaching is no longer championship caliber.

There’s still great talent at Georgia — the old Spurrier knock on Ray Goff now attaches itself to this coach: “Georgia gets all these players; I don’t know what happens to them” — but the coaching has fallen below SEC standards. If we’re looking for the sea-change game, we need underscore Sept. 27, 2008, the night Nick Saban and Alabama came to Athens and not only jumped ahead but led by 31 points after 30 minutes.

And then...

Murray has had a terrific freshman season and had a fabulous second half, but in the season’s biggest moment he made the one play a quarterback cannot make.

That’s what Georgia under Richt has come to do: It makes the one play to lose a game, as opposed to David Greene throwing to Verron Haynes in Knoxville or to Michael Johnson in Auburn. (Or even Matthew Stafford throwing to Mikey Henderson in Tuscaloosa.) Georgia under Richt has become the toothless tiger — the team everyone respects but nobody fears.

Hard to believe this stat: Since Nov. 29, 2008, Georgia is 13-11.

Heather Dinich makes her bowl projections and doesn't include Clemson.

She also says N.C. State has turned the corner under Tom O'Brien. Who'd have envisioned the contrasting routes taken by the Wolfpack and Tigers at the time of Clemson's thumping of N.C. State last year in Raleigh?

In this story from the Boston Globe, a quote from Montel Harris:

The game was less than three minutes old and the Tigers led, 7-0. Not a confidence booster for a freshman quarterback, or a team that was dealing with a five-game losing streak.

Rettig and the offense came off the field and were met by BC’s defense.

“The defense came over and said, ‘They’re not going to score on us, so as long as you all do your job and get it in the end zone, we’re going to win this game,’ ’’ said running back Montel Harris.

And how about Syracuse, a year after Rob Spence's short and unsuccessful stint as offensive coordinator.



LW