Ad Disclosure
Game of the Week: Clemson vs. Georgia (-13.5 via FanDuel)
The stakes
Look, it’s a long year. The longest ever, actually, spanning nearly 5 full months. They’re not handing out Playoff tickets on Labor Day, right? Isn’t Opening Day(-ish) a little soon for Playoff Implications?
Folks, it’s never too soon for Playoff Implications.
Yes, the expanded 12-team CFP format takes some of the sting out of an opening-day loss, which has never been a strictly make-or-break affair for teams with national ambitions as much as it has been a tone-setter for the rest of the season, anyway. This year, that’s more true than ever. Not only can the loser Saturday still make the cut but because first-round byes in the new format are reserved for conference champions, the outcome won’t have any bearing on either team’s pursuit of 1 the top 4 seeds either way. No doors are opening or closing as a result of the first game.
Still, some doors might remain more open than others.
For Clemson, especially, it’s a test of whether an at-large bid remains within the realm of possibility for this team, or if the Tigers’ only viable path is through the ACC title. Florida State’s Week Zero loss to Georgia Tech in Ireland did put Clemson back in the driver’s seat in the conference. But an upset over the nation’s No. 1 team would have enormous implications, not the least of which would be proving that Clemson is still a program capable of winning these types of games — the Tigers haven’t beaten an opponent ranked higher than 10th in the AP poll since 2020, Trevor Lawrence’s last year as the starting quarterback.
Reporters might even be compelled to declare a season-long moratorium on asking Dabo Swinney about his rigid opposition to the transfer portal. (Well, for a few weeks, anyway.) Practically speaking it would also ease the margin for error in the conference standings by preserving an at-large route. With a loss on Saturday, that route almost certainly does not exist.
Georgia doesn’t have much more breathing room. The Dawgs are used to spending entire months of the regular season in cruise control, but that will not be the case this year against what is easily the most booby-trapped schedule of Kirby Smart‘s tenure. Beyond Clemson, UGA is facing road top-10 tests at Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss, plus a November date against Tennessee. How many wins against that gauntlet can Georgia afford to take for granted? Blow the opener as a double-digit favorite, and suddenly the answer is none.
The stat: 9.8 yards
That was Clemson QB Cade Klubnik‘s average yards per completion in 2023 — not per attempt, but per completion — good for 102nd nationally and dead last among qualifying passers in the ACC. For context, that’s a full yard below what his predecessor, DJ Uiagalelei, managed over the previous 2 seasons (10.9 ypc) in what was widely acknowledged to be a disappointing turn in one of the sport’s most high-profile positions.
Unless you are unusually attuned to Clemson football, the fact that you probably didn’t hear nearly as much about last year’s low-wattage attack as you did the previous 2 is a sign of just how far the bar has dropped. Is this just what Clemson’s offense is now? The post-pandemic malaise has endured across 3 seasons, 3 offensive coordinators and a pair of 5-star quarterbacks with very different skill sets, with no end in sight.
The Tigers averaged a pedestrian 23.6 points per game in ACC play in 2023, a 13-point drop from 2022 and a 21-point drop from their last Playoff appearance in 2020. The teams that played for the CFP title in 2018 and ’19 both averaged roughly twice that number.
If it seems unfair to compare to the current Tigers to the heyday of the Trevor Lawrence years, well, yeah. Exactly. It’s not all about the QB: Altogether, Clemson has had just 3 offensive players at any position taken in the past 3 drafts, none of them higher than the 4th round. Barring a surprise, that trend will continue in 2025. The drop-off at receiver, especially, is inseparable from the frustration behind center. After a decade-long run of next-level wideouts, Clemson hasn’t an individual player crack the top 15 in the ACC in receiving yards in any of the past 3 seasons. The leading target in 2023, true freshman Tyler Brown, ranked 24th in the conference with 531 yards on 10.2 per catch; the resident veteran of the group, junior Antonio Williams, has averaged just 10.6 yards over the past 2 years.
The verdict is still out on Klubnik, the consensus No. 1 quarterback in the 2022 recruiting class, who could always be due for a leap in his second year as a starter. (He is only a rising junior, after all.) But if there’s anyone in the surrounding cast who makes Georgia’s secondary sweat, let’s just say he’s had one heck of an offseason.
The big question: Does Georgia have a dominant individual presence?
The Dawgs boast an abundance of depth at nearly every position, as always, but no one who singlehandedly moves the needle on his own. Who are the dudes? The gotta-have-it receiver now that Brock Bowers is gone? The unblockable interior force a la Jalen Carter? The one-on-one nightmare? The feared pass rusher? There’s a surplus of candidates, but even the headliners are more “first among equals” in a loaded rotation than true stars.
That’s not necessarily a deal-breaker in their bid to go all the way. Under Kirby Smart, Georgia has never put much emphasis on individual star power on either side of the ball, sharing touches liberally on offense and subbing heavily on defense. Incredibly, UGA has not had a first-team All-SEC quarterback, running back or wide receiver on Smart’s watch; over the past 4 years, only 1 player at any those positions has even cracked the second team (Ladd McConkey in 2022; skills aside, Brock Bowers was listed as a tight end, remember). Defensively, no Smart-era defender has recorded more than 4 interceptions or 8.5 sacks in a given season, or 100+ tackles since 2017. They’re just not on the field long enough.
At the same time, though, there’s no denying that Georgia’s success relies on a steady pipeline of dudes: Smart claims 10 consensus All-Americans (8 of them on defense) and 17 first-round picks. One of those All-Americans, junior safety Malaki Starks, is back for what will almost certainly be his final season on campus after recording 3 INTs as a sophomore. Incumbent QB and Heisman hopeful Carson Beck is clearly the face of the program, but Starks is arguably the team’s best player and most bankable first-rounder. He also plays a position where most of his best work occurs off-screen, where he’s typically dissuading opposing quarterbacks from even attempting to challenge him downfield. The next guy who frequently leaps off the screen is TBD.
The key matchup: Clemson OT Tristan Leigh vs. Georgia Edge Mykel Williams
One of leading candidates for a leap year is Williams, whose just-OK production over his first 2 seasons has not reflected his enormous potential. Part of the reason for that is his position — the same hand-in-the-dirt, stack-and-shed role previously manned by No. 1 overall pick Travon Walker — doesn’t lend itself to conventional box scores. (Walker, a borderline extraterrestrial athlete, had notoriously meager college production for a player who was even being considered for that expensive a pick.) But the pass rush was a sore point across the board last year, most obviously in the absence of an every-down edge threat opposite Williams who was capable of routinely putting opposing tackles in a blender.
In Year 3, the Dawgs are hoping Williams can assume that role himself. By all accounts, he’s spent much of his time in both spring and fall camps working at “Jack,” a stand-up outside linebacker role that allows him more freedom to pin back his ears. Against Clemson, the man between Williams and the quarterback will usually be Leigh, a former 5-star who took over as the starting left tackle in 2023 as a redshirt sophomore. At 6-6, 315 pounds, Leigh has the requisite size and then some; the rest remains a work in progress. PFF cited him for 24 QB pressures and 3 sacks allowed in ’23, including a particularly rough outing against Kentucky in the Gator Bowl. Regardless, this is one of those matchups that scouts will pore over with a fine-toothed comb. Whichever guy plays up to his billing will have made himself some money.
Prediction: Georgia 29, Clemson 13
It’s too pat to chalk up Clemson’s decline from the national elite to any single factor, but Dabo Swinney’s singular refusal to adapt to the free-transfer era is a pretty good shorthand for the state of affairs. Over the past 5 years, the only incoming transfers he has accepted were a pair of deep-reserve quarterbacks more focused on getting a head start on their transition into coaching careers than ever taking a live snap. He has deflected questions about his anti-transfer stance in various ways, most recently quipping, “most of the guys in the portal aren’t good enough to play for us.” True enough.
But some of the guys in the portal are good enough, as the likes of Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Texas, et al readily prove on an annual basis. There’s not a single hole on the depth chart that wouldn’t benefit from an upgrade? Five years ago, Swinney could plausibly contend that the answer was no. Today, even a quick glance at the depth chart will tell you that is no longer the case. (That is, if they bothered to publish a depth chart.)
But the fixation on the portal obscures the bigger picture, which is that in terms of raw talent Clemson remains as loaded as ever. Based on the current roster, the Tigers rank No. 5 in 247Sports’ Team Talent Composite and 10th according to the Blue-Chip Ratio. There are nearly as many 5-star recruits on hand (7) as the rest of the ACC combined (10), including an incumbent starting quarterback. You can’t argue that this team just doesn’t have the players to compete anymore.
The coaches, on the other hand, are another story.
The stability of Swinney’s staff during the glory years has yielded to churn, with exactly the results Tigers fans feared when several longtime assistants decided to finally say yes to becoming head coaches themselves. Both sides of the ball were under new coordinators in 2022, and the offense underwent another transition in ’23. The Tigers return both coordinators this year for the first time since 2021, the year the dynasty began to unravel. If there’s even a tiny fraction of a glimmer of hope left for getting those years back, this is the stage to prove it.
Sleeper is one of our favorite apps like PrizePicks. Remember to use promo code SOUTHXL when you sign up for an account today and you’ll receive a first-time deposit match of up to $100:
Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.
