After a disappointing loss in Durham Monday night, the Tigers face a short week preparing for game two. This week they will face Charleston Southern in the first home game for Clemson this season. Saturday afternoon will be a great opportunity for Dabo Swinney and his team to bounce back and begin to right the ship. Five days is not a desirable amount of time to get ready to play a college football game at all. Getting beat in that fashion in the season opener on national television causing many to doubt how good this team can be should be a great motivator though. The Tigers might have the best opponent to take some anger out on this weekend too.
Charleston Southern Overview
Charleston Southern, whose mascot is the Buccaneers, is a NCAA FCS school part of the Big South Conference. In 2022 they finished with a 2-8 record and decided to make a change at the head coach position. At the end of 2022, Gabe Giardina was hired to take over the program starting in 2023.
He is the sixth head coach of the school and is actually in his third stint for the Buccaneers. Giardina’s last time working there was as offensive coordinator under Jamey Chadwell, the current head coach at Liberty University. He has also worked as a Graduate Assistant at Alabama under both Mike Shula and Nick Saban. His last stop was at Division Two’s Albany State where he had an overall 37-17 record. While there he won the SIAC conference championship and coach of the year in 2021. Giardina does know how to build a program and is trying to start something great at Charleston Southern.
So far, he has a 1-0 record for the Buccaneers. Last week, Charleston Southern won a nail bitter against Division Two’s North Greenville 13-10. In that game, two different quarterbacks saw playing time for the Bucs. To start the game they went with redshirt freshman Kaleb Jackson. While in the game Jackson went two for eight throwing with nine yards. In the second quarter, the change was made to go with redshirt junior Tony Bartalo who went 5/12 passing with 95 yards. The only touchdown scored for Charleston Southern was in the fourth quarter on a three-yard run by running back Autavius Ison. On defense after allowing 10 points scored in the first half, the Bucs’ defense shut out North Greenville in the second. Defensive tackle Laorn Davis played very well getting four tackles, two sacks, and even an interception off of a batted ball.
Offense needs confidence
After a lackluster showing on Monday night, the Tigers offense needs to show something to give fans and themselves some much-needed confidence. As it stands now it is hard to have much faith in this offense, but there is reason to have some. As we mentioned in the Duke game review, the run, and screen game both work very well for the Tigers. So well they equated to 422 yards of total offense. That is without the explosive plays everyone wants to see. The potential to finally see some of those plays could become present for the Tigers this weekend.
Will Shipley and Phil Mafah should both have monster games. Outside of Davis, Charleston Southern’s defensive front is not very good. They are quick at the snap but struggle to actually get off of blocks and do not tackle very well. They have aggressive defensive backs, especially safeties, who are not afraid to come down and do the cleanup work though. This is where the explosive plays could make an appearance. Charleston Southern will quickly put a safety in the box and play with only one high leaving opportunities open downfield. The cornerbacks are not great in coverage and the safety can be slow to help them out which means someone should be able to get separation. From there it will just be up to Cade Klubnik to put the ball on them and allow his receivers to have a chance to make plays.
Defense needs to Dominate
There is no real way to sugarcoat this the Charleston Southern offense is just pretty bad right now. For starters, they are not very good up front. The offensive line is not very big, mostly at the tackle position where neither starter is even at 300 pounds. Besides that, they can move well but are not very strong and don’t get up to the linebackers. They just lose too much initial ground to form a strong run game and they do not hold pass blocks very long. With the amount of talent Clemson has along the defensive line there is no reason they can’t control the game.
Running the ball should be extremely difficult for the Bucs and putting them in passing situations is exactly what is wanted. Charleston Southern just has not found much good quarterback play yet and it doesn’t seem like it is coming soon. Neither quarterback was great passing the ball in the previous game. It does not help when they also did not have much time in the pocket and receivers seem to still need to learn the playbook. This should be an absolutely commanding performance by this Clemson defense. If they want to be noticed as a top defense in the country again they must push around this underwhelming offense.
Prediction
In terms of a bounce-back game, Clemson could not ask for a better opponent than this. They can use this game to work on the basics, open up the playbook, and get their confidence back. They are facing an FCS Charleston Southern team coming off of a two-win season, with a new head coach, and did not play particularly well against a Division Two school. The Tigers should control the game from the first snap to the last whistle. We believe Swinney will have his team angry and ready to dominate come Saturday afternoon.
Clemson 56 Charleston Southern 10
