Greg McElroy buying stock in Clemson offense

Clemson has scored a combined 125 points in its last two games, and Greg McElroy is buying stock in the Tigers’ offense ahead of a Week 5 matchup versus Stanford.

“Remember Dabo Swinney said this last year on the heels, I believe it was a win against Notre Dame,” the ESPN analyst said on his show this week. “They were 4-4 at the time, they beat Notre Dame, all of a sudden they’re 5-4, and he said, the Clemson stock, you ought to buy it right now.

“Well, yes, Clemson did not look good in their first game against Georgia in the second half. That’s an important caveat, because everyone looks at the final score and they say, ‘Oh, Georgia won the game by 31 points.’ Totally accurate, that happened. I won’t push back on that. I called the game. I saw it with my own two eyes. I saw it. But I did see a Clemson team that battled for the better part of the first 30 minutes. I also saw a Clemson team that was way too conservative.”

That was Clemson’s issue in its 34-3, season-opening loss to the Bulldogs, according to McElroy, who believes offensive coordinator Garrett Riley should have been throwing “haymakers.” After all, in McElroy’s eyes, a game of tug of war wasn’t going to work for Clemson in that matchup.

“You’re going to have to create chunk yardage,” McElroy explained. “And guess what? After Week 1, Clemson went back to the drawing board, and they said, ‘Alright, here’s what we’re going to do. We are now going to start taking shots. Like, who cares? If we go down, we’re going down swinging. We’re going to start airing it out. We’re going to use quarterback run. We have talented wide receivers with speed. We’re going to just try to throw it over people’s heads, and let’s just see what happens.’

“Well, you know what’s happened the last couple weeks? It happens against Appalachian State. You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s Appalachian State.’ It happens against N.C. State, you’re like, ‘Alright, hang on a second.’ Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

McElroy alluded to it, but Clemson thumped Appalachian State, 66-20, in Week 2. Then, two weeks later, the Tigers blew out North Carolina State, 59-35 — that game was more decisive than the score suggests, too, because the Wolfpack piled up their final 21 points in the last 12:07 of play.

After a rough opener, Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik has posted an 8:0 touchdown-to-interception ratio over the last two games. He completed 24-of-26 passes against App State and 16-of-24 passes against N.C. State without taking a sack in either game.

The Tigers are humming offensively — also thanks to 250-plus rushing yards in consecutive games — and they’re hoping for that balanced success to continue this week against Stanford.

“Cade Klubnik, I think is playing his best football,” McElroy said. “And sometimes it just takes a little time, right? Like Cade Klubnik as a young player last year, the expectations were sky high. And guess what? It’s hard to play quarterback in the Power 5. It’s hard. You got to be really good. You got to be really, really good. And even though you have talent, it doesn’t necessarily always mean you’re going to have great production.

“Well, he’s always had talent. Now he’s starting to understand and see the bigger picture. So I’ve been very encouraged by what I’ve seen from him. I also think that he’s more comfortable in Garrett Riley’s offense. Garrett Riley is finally starting to say, ‘You know what, forget about it, guys. We got good weapons. We’re going to take our shots. Let’s just go after them.’ And it’s really been impressive to watch.”

Dabo Swinney reflects on growth of Garrett Riley’s Clemson offense

When Clemson scored only six points in a season-opening defeat to then-No. 1 Georgia, alarms sounded about Dabo Swinney’s program. The Tigers missed the College Football Playoff the last three seasons and failed to crack the top 25 in scoring offense each of those years. The three years before that, Clemson was firmly entrenched in the top five of the points per game department.

But while early September questions swirled about Swinney’s transfer portal reluctance, Riley’s offense and Klubnik’s future, Clemson didn’t panic.

Since, the Tigers have demonstrated why with back-to-back offensive explosions. Just like that, the Tigers have slingshotted up to 15th nationally in scoring offense.

“It’s been awesome,” Swinney said this week when asked what it’s been like to see the offense click and Riley put everything together.

“Last year, we missed a lot of opportunities. It was frustrating. We see things differently — when this is what you do every single day — than maybe just the person on the outside looking in. And we know our players, and we know how close we’ve been on some things. So it’s fun to see them put it together. It’s fun to see them take the next step.”

Swinney continued: “But we saw this in the spring. We saw this in the spring, we saw this in the summer, we saw this in fall camp. So it’s just great for it to come to fruition and to see so many guys being involved, so many guys that can really play and not having to kind of patch some things together. We’ve been fortunate to this point, and hopefully we can continue to have a little luck with a couple key spots.”

Swinney hired Riley last offseason. Riley, the brother of USC head coach Lincoln Riley, came over from TCU, where he helped the Horned Frogs reach the national title game in 2022. That season, a Max Duggan-led offense averaged 38.8 points per game, tied for the ninth most of any team in the country.

Last year at Clemson, however, the Tigers scored 38 or more points against power conference competition only twice: first against Georgia Tech on Nov. 11 and then versus Kentucky in the Gator Bowl, both wins.

“We saw progress, even though sometimes maybe to other people — it’s not always what you see,” Swinney said. “Progress isn’t always what you see. Sometimes it’s kind of unseen, but you see it coming. In the way we finished the season last year was a huge step forward for us, and you can see the guys kind of coming on and the belief that was coming, and we just built on it.

“But, I mean that’s just coaching. Sometimes, you got a young quarterback that’s getting a first year … there’s always growing pains. Not everybody’s going to walk in and day one be this amazing quarterback at this level. And same thing at the next level. I mean, sometimes, but if that’s the standard, you’re going to fire a lot of quarterbacks quick. Sometimes you just got to be patient, especially when you know that you got a really talented player, and you see the work that’s being put in.”