Clemson returns home this week after a dominant road win at Lane Stadium. In last week’s analysis, we discussed how Virginia Tech’s offense was fool’s gold. They didn’t have the raw talent (i.e., blue chip recruits) to quickly replace the high-end developed talent that departed (QB Jerod Evans, TE Bucky Hodges, and WR Isaiah Ford). The poor defenses they’d played in the season’s first four weeks (WVU, Delware, ECU, ODU) were covering up that fact. As the game played out, this analysis was validated.
Clemson struggled on special teams (they had one very poor punt, a short kickoff, and a missed FG), but a very good effort on offense and a downright dominant one on defense prevented this from being a four quarter battle.