If you watched the Clemson-Georgia game in Week 1—and you really should have—you’d have seen nearly 150 plays between the two teams, over 1,000 combined yards of offense and 73 combined points. That would appear to be a lot to take in on the stat sheet, and it felt just as action-packed as it unfolded.
Clemson wants its offense moving even faster than it was vs. Georgia
Clemson got 76 plays and 38 points out of its offense on Saturday, and according to offensive coordinator Chad Morris that is unacceptably slow and boring.
Joshua S. Kelly-USA TODAY Sports
Don’t tell that to Clemson’s coaching staff, though. They saw Clemson’s 76 plays in 27:42 of possession time and were practically put to sleep. So it seems, anyway, according to this report from the Associated Press (via SI.com):
Offensive coordinator Chad Morris didn't like No. 8 Clemson's tempo in their season-opening win against fifth-ranked Georgia. He put the blame squarely on Tigers quarterback Tajh Boyd and not the Bulldogs injuries on defense that interrupted Clemson's pace.
[...] "We can play faster. Tajh slowed us down a whole bunch. That was some of our biggest downfalls,'' Morris said. "He played well, he played like a veteran, like he's supposed to play. But as far as the tempo, especially in the third and fourth quarter, he was the one slowing us down because he wasn't getting his eyes to the sidelines quick enough.''
(NOTE: Clemson was called for zero delay of game penalties on Saturday.)
You'll notice that Morris doesn't put the blame of slowing the game down on things like feigned injuries, which allegedly piled up during the game on Saturday. Of particular note was the departure of linebacker Leonard Floyd, who wasn't involved in a play before crumpling to the ground in a heap and requiring attention from the trainers, as seen here:
Seems a little suspicious, eh? But according to Mark Richt, that one was legit—and you’ll see from the play before that one that Floyd “got hit in the privates real hard,” as Richt put it, and yeah, this isn’t pleasant:
Yet regardless of whether Floyd was actually in a great deal of pain, as George Schroeder of the USA Today notes, the current rules landscape is one where teams just aren’t punished for slowing the pace of games down by exaggerating or outright faking injuries. Richt says he instructs players to “stay down” and await medical attention, since trying to get themselves off the field would “give the other team the advantage,” as he put it. It doesn’t take much to read between the lines there.
Being as that’s the case, though, offensive coordinators don’t really have control over whether opposing defenders take a flop or whatever. What they can control is whether their quarterback gets his danged ol’ head around fast enough to get the plays in quick enough, and on that front c’mon now Tajh, we ain’t got all day here!
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