SOUTH BEND, Ind. — That was it, Clemson?
That was all you’ve got?
The biggest game you’ve had in 14 months — with two weeks to prepare, at that — and this is the best you could do?
A 35-14 loss that wasn’t all that close, to a Notre Dame team that had already been beaten here by Marshall and Stanford — on the same day you clinched a trip to the ACC title game, no less?
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Is this the best the ACC has to offer?
“Just absolutely dominated us in every facet of football, starting with coaching,” Dabo Swinney said.
“They just physically kicked our butt,” he later added. “Period. The end.”
“This was an ass-kicking,” he re-affirmed. “Period. That’s what it is.”
That is not oversimplifying matters: Clemson was the inferior team on offense, on defense and on special teams.
The Tigers surrendered 100-yard outputs to two different backs and gave up 263 rushing yards in all, this after entering as the nation’s No. 7 run defense. They allowed this to happen despite knowing exactly what was coming, with Notre Dame passing for just 85 yards and never even bothering to establish an aerial attack.
“Obviously, we were not the most physical team,” defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin said. “That’s 100 percent on me, and getting them prepared the right way to come out and execute and be the most physically dominant team. And obviously we lost at the point of attack.”
Again, this was plain for all to see.
Notre Dame entered tied for the national lead in blocked punts with five. Everyone had talked about this ad nauseam in the lead-up to the game.
So what happened on Clemson’s first punt of the night? The Irish didn’t just block the kick, they returned it 17 yards for a touchdown, setting an ominous tone for the visitors.
How?
“Didn’t block the guy right up the middle,” Swinney said matter of factly.
DJ Uiagalelei was chased around all game, getting sacked four times and pressured three times. When Clemson tried to change things up with five-star freshman Cade Klubnik, Irish freshman Benjamin Morrison intercepted the backup on his first throw. When Uiagalelei was reinserted on the next drive, Morrison picked him off, too, this time returning the ball 96 yards for a touchdown that made it 28-0 in the fourth quarter and made a shutout seem like a real possibility.
Uiagalelei helped the Tigers save face with a pair of late touchdown drives, helping the school avoid its first blanking since 2003. But that was about all that could be said for Clemson in a game this team simply was not ready for.
“It’s a tough one,” Uiagalelei said. “Definitely not the way that we planned, definitely not what we thought the outcome would be. But hey, hats off to Notre Dame. They played an unbelievable game.
“They were the better football team today, plain and simple as that. At the end of the day, we’ve got to play better, I’ve got to play better. And shoot, ain’t nothing we can really do about it now. All we can do about it is respond.”
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This was a flawed Notre Dame team taking a high-resolution mirror to Clemson, exposing all of the Tigers’ flaws across 60 minutes of forgettable football and delivering them a bill long past due.
Seven penalties? No downfield passing attack to speak of? A failure, after the second drive of the game, to cross midfield until the fourth quarter?
All of America had its doubts about these Tigers, from Vegas setting curiously low lines for games against seemingly inferior opponents, to Uiagalelei looking just vulnerable enough through the first two months to keep the bad memories from last season lingering in the minds of Clemson fans everywhere.
Then that near-meltdown against Syracuse happened, with Klubnik receiving way too much credit for completing all of two passes in a come-from-behind win against the Orange that kept the Tigers undefeated ahead Saturday night’s final road game of the season in South Bend.
On Tuesday, the College Football Playoff selection committee deemed the Tigers the fourth-best team in the country, ahead of two other unbeaten Power 5 teams that, at least based on the eye test, had performed better so far this season.
Michigan laughed at the rankings.
TCU laughed at the rankings.
And after this debacle at Notre Dame Stadium, everyone else is laughing, too.
Clemson had an open date last week while the Irish dominated that same Syracuse team. The Tigers had all the motivation in the world after losing their last time here, in a game in which Uiagalelei had broken the Notre Dame opponent passing yards record and set a bar so high for himself that he is still suffering from the effects of unrealistic outside expectations.
Throw in the constant disrespect the ACC has had thrown its way — forever, it seems — and these Tigers did not lack for inspiration, especially after Syracuse’s loss at Pitt earlier in the day clinched the Atlantic division for them before kickoff.
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Now? Notre Dame stretched its regular-season winning steak against ACC opponents to 27. With common opponents this easy, the Irish may want to think about joining a conference after all.
That would be bad news for Clemson, which insisted throughout this past year that its 10-win season of 2021 was a perfect storm of youth and injuries, and not a sign of deeper issues.
But not even the ever-optimistic Swinney could put too positive of a spin on this performance, the shocked tone of his voice overcome only by the internal realization of just how far this program looks from legitimately contending for a national title again.
“I wish I could say I saw it coming,” he said. “We had a great week of practice, a great week of preparation.”
“In 14 years as a head coach,” he later added, “this is one of the most disappointing days I’ve had.”
When it was all over, Clemson had to wait five extra minutes to clear the field, since Notre Dame’s fans had stormed it again, after beating the Tigers for the second time in three years here.
This is still foreign ground for the Tigers. But nights like Saturday’s sure make you wonder just how dangerously close they are to getting acquainted with life on the other side of contention.
(Top photo of Notre Dame running back Audric Estime (7) running past Clemson defenders: Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)