The Clemson Tigers actually moved the ball relatively well on offense last season, but they had trouble finishing drives and finding the end zone. But it sounds like that’s an area where the team worked very hard this offseason.
Ahead of the team’s season-opening showdown with the top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday afternoon, Dabo Swinney made it clear that he thought the team was “really poor” in the red zone last year and needs to be a lot better this season.
“We’ve worked really hard on it and you’re exactly right, when we’ve been a great team around here we’ve held out in the red zone,” Swinney said. “Then we finished in the red zone offensively, and we were really poor at that last year. We were 15th in first downs, so yeah we got a lot of yards, a lot of first downs. We were like 120th in red zone scoring. Turnovers, missed kicks, blocked kicks, missed assignments. So we’ve got to be better.
“If we’re going to finish like we want to finish that is where you have to ultimately finish, and that’s in the red zone. We feel good about our preparation. Obviously we’ve got a great, great opponent today, not a lot of room for error, but we’re ready for the challenge.”
We’ll have to see how Clemson fares in the red zone this season.
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