What has changed for Clemson during its three-game winning streak?

Clemson has returned to simple, fundamental football and it's paid off in a big way.

And in the blink of an eye, the 2023 college football regular season is nearly at its end. There's no hope for a conference championship for a vast majority of teams - Clemson and South Carolina included - and only a bowl game could keep the season alive for a few weeks longer.

Unlike the Gamecocks, the Tigers are guaranteed a bowl spot with their seven wins, but that didn't seem like a foregone conclusion just four weeks ago. Clemson was coming off two losses, most recently to N.C. State, and sat at 4-4 with a daunting four games remaining on the schedule, but something changed with the team in that week following. 

Phil Mafah breaks away from a North Carolina defender / Clemson Athletics

All of a sudden, the finesse, jerky offense that had been so volatile all season turned into a bludgeoning force of power runs and down-field shots. 

That's been the biggest change. If you asked Dabo Swinney if there was one thing he could go back and change before the season, and got a real answer, it'd be taking a lot of the pressure off of Cade Klubnik. It felt for the first few weeks as if the responsibility for the offense's success had been dumped in Klubnik's lap and he was drowning. It wasn't that he was scared of the spotlight, he just didn't know where the brakes were, trying to be perfect on every play instead of just going with the flow of the game.

In Clemson's first eight games, Klubnik averaged 36.75 attempts per game. That's down to 30.6 over the past three. But it's not that Clemson's been taking the ball of out Klubnik's hands, they just haven't been using him as the catalyst for the offense, instead turning to Phil Mafah and Will Shipley to be the backbone of the unit. Phil Mafah touched the ball 88 times in Clemson's first eight games. He's touched it 81 times over Clemson's last three.

Fundamentals, like staying ahead of the sticks, have played a big role as well. Against N.C. State, Clemson picked up 163 yards on 35 first downs, good for 4.65 yards per play. The only problem, one of those plays was a 41-yard run from Mafah and two of them were interceptions. Take away Mafah's run and Clemson averaged just 3.5 yards per play on first down, consistently behind the sticks. Against Notre Dame, excluding defensive penalties, the Tigers picked up 209 yards on 31 first-down plays, averaging 6.7 yards per first-down play. To be fair, Mafah had a 41-yard run on a first down in this one as well, but the Tigers still averaged 5.6 yards on first down outside of that play.

It's been a simple recipe for Clemson over the past few weeks; don't turn the ball over, run the football, and don't get behind the sticks. Simple, effective football. If they play that way against South Carolina (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, SECN) they'll win by double-digits and send the Gamecocks home for the season.