College Football News has Clemson<\/a> pegged for an appearance in the Gator Bowl. While the program has a lot of experience playing in that bowl game, it\u2019s the projected opponent that makes this one interesting.<\/p>\nThe outlet is projecting Oklahoma (5-1, 1-1 SEC) to be the opposing team, which would mean a Dabo Swinney vs. Brent Venables matchup. The Sooners are coming off their first loss of the season, a 23-6 defeat at the hands of Texas. <\/p>\n
Venables was a central figure in Clemson\u2019s six consecutive College Football Playoff appearances from 2015 to 2020, which included two national titles. <\/p>\n
As the Tigers\u2019 defensive coordinator from 2012-2021, Venables built one of the nation\u2019s top defenses. Over that span, the Tigers ranked first nationally in sacks (445; next most was 392) and opponent third-down conversion percentage (30.2), second in opponent pass efficiency rating (111.1) and takeaways (244; tied), third in scoring defense (17.8 ppg) and opponent completion percentage (53.3), fourth in total defense (311.4 ypg) and pass defense (190.5 ypg), fifth in interceptions (148) and sixth in rushing defense (120.9 ypg). His defenses helped the program win ACC titles each year from 2015-20.<\/p>\n
Venables left after the 2021 campaign to take over as head coach at Oklahoma, where he served as defensive coordinator before joining Swinney\u2019s staff. He was on the staff when the Sooners won it all in 2000. <\/p>\n
While there is still a lot of football to be played, and it\u2019s far from a guarantee that this projection comes to fruition, this is one matchup that sure is fun to think about. <\/p>\n
This season\u2019s Gator Bowl is set to be played on December 27 at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN. The game is played at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bowl projections do not mean a whole lot at this point in the season, but after Clemson\u2019s 41-10…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":300629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[19416,1318,19419,7130,1317,1315,1316,19417,62,19418,67,132,68,15613],"class_list":{"0":"post-300628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-clemson-insider-podcast","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-gymnastics","11":"tag-hero","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-noonan","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-track-and-field","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-wednesday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115368395103928081","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}