Will Muschamp promises wrinkles, ‘window dressing’ on offense vs Clemson

Two seasons ago in Clemson, South Carolina’s football team took some swings early in the first few drives against the Tigers and caught a vicious counterpunch. Last year, things were a little tighter, give or take some up-tempo, and USC kept the game close for a little longer.

The Gamecocks offense is under new management with Bryan McClendon, and his boss, Will Muschamp, said there will be some wrinkles in the offensive gameplan come Saturday in Death Valley.

“Bryan and the offensive staff have done a really good job of narrowing some things down early in the week as far as our openers are concerned,” Muschamp said on his weekly call-in show. “They’re doing some different things, whether it be formation, shift, motion, tempo, whatever it is. But we’re not doing so much where our guys are confused.”

How does a team do that? It happens not as much in doing many different things, but doing the things they do best a little differently.

“It’s the same run concepts, the same pass concepts,” Muschamp said. “But we’re giving them what I call window dressing to the defense, which disguises what we’re doing a little bit.”

USC’s offense has been on a good run since the second half of the Texas A&M game. Across that stretch of admittedly weaker defenses, USC has averaged 38.8 points and 7 yards per play.

They Tigers are allowing 3.9 yards per play, No. 1 in the country, and have held USC to 3.8 yards per play each of the past two years (the worst and second worst outputs for units that weren’t all that good).

USC will have backs Rico Dowdle and Ty’Son Williams a little hobbled but available. The Gamecocks will have the likes of runners A.J. Turner and Mon Denson ready, along with receivers Deebo Samuel, Shi Smith, Bryan Edwards and Jake Bentley at the helm.

They’ll be facing a defense loaded with NFL talent, led by a line that could see four taken in the first round of the pro draft. Scoring on that group is a tall task for any offense anywhere.

But South Carolina is hoping a little window dressing atop the things it already does well is enough to at least get started out of the gate.

“I think that our guys are able to play fast,” Muschamp said. “They’re able to react, they’re not thinking, and they’ve got a tremendous amount of confidence in what we’re doing.”

This story was originally published November 21, 2018 at 10:44 AM.