Previewing final two games: What needs to happen as Tigers face Deacs and Gamecocks

The Tigers have two games remaining in the regular season.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Sun Nov 14 12:00:06 GMT-04:00 2021

Clemson has two games left in the 2021 regular season, and while we don’t have perfect clarity about those two weeks, the way forward is fairly clear.

The Tigers enter the last two weeks with a 7-3 overall record and a 5-2 record in the ACC (losses at NC State and Pitt). Wake Forest – Clemson’s next opponent – sits atop the ACC Atlantic with a 9-1 overall record and a 6-0 record in the conference. The Demon Deacons’ path to an ACC Atlantic Division title is clear – win one of the next two games, next week against Clemson or the regular-season finale at Boston College.

NC State now has a 7-3 overall record and sits at 4-2 in the ACC Atlantic with games remaining against Syracuse and UNC. For the Wolfpack to win the division, they need Wake to lose its final two games while they sweep the Orange and the Tar Heels. That would leave a three-way tie in the division and the ACC tiebreakers in that case would favor the Wolfpack because they would hold the head-to-head over Clemson and one of their two losses would fall outside the division – the Pack lost 31-30 to Miami on Oct. 23rd, so they would clinch on divisional record.

Clemson isn’t out of the equation, but it requires NC State to lose one more time and Wake Forest to lose both remaining games. The Tigers simply don’t have any way in with the tiebreakers, so they need for both Wake Forest to have two losses (and hold the head-to-head advantage over the Deacs) and NC State to have three losses.

That isn’t out of the question – UNC is still very dangerous and looking to find a good bowl game to go to, the game is on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the Tar Heels can definitely win that game. As for Boston College defeating Wake Forest – the Eagles recently received a big boost with the return of quarterback Phil Jurkovec. Jurkovec was electric in Boston College’s win over Georgia Tech Saturday, completing 13-of-20 passes for 310 yards, 2 TDs passing, plus 71 yards and 3 TDs on the ground. That game is at Alumni Stadium on The Heights, and you can bet it will be cold and windy and play into the hands of the Eagles, a program that will also be looking to make a statement in the finale, having won two in a row under Jurkovec (they also beat Virginia Tech) and becoming bowl eligible.

Now, Wake Forest already has a loss, and that was to North Carolina a week ago, so why doesn’t that count in the league standings? It’s a weird situation, and we can thank conference expansion.

Wake and North Carolina played annually (with the exception of a few years during the World Wars) from 1888 to 2007. But with expansions in the ACC — initially to 12 teams in 2005 and then to 14 in 2013 — the two teams were placed in opposite divisions and given different protected rivalries.

Though they’re scheduled to play an ACC contest next year and ended up facing each other last year with the altered schedule due to COVID-19, they hadn’t previously played a conference matchup since 2015. In an attempt to keep the rivalry prevalent, the schools agreed to play a pair of non-conference games in 2019 and 2021, with Wake Forest taking the first contest in Winston-Salem and UNC winning last week in Chapel Hill. In other words, two conference rivals played an out-of-conference game against each other. Welcome to 2021.

To make it easy on you, for Clemson to win the Atlantic, it needs to beat Wake Forest next week and have Wake Forest lose the following week at Boston College. The Tigers then need NC State to lose one of its final two remaining games, either against Syracuse or UNC.

That leads us to the rivalry game against South Carolina. New head coach Shane Beamer has brought some excitement back to the program, and the Gamecocks knocked off Florida a week ago before losing at Missouri Saturday. The Gamecocks have five wins and really needed to knock off Missouri to become bowl eligible – a huge win for Beamer in his first season – but now face Auburn and Clemson in the final two games.

Auburn lost to Miss. St. Saturday but still has six wins on the season, was recently ranked, and as they vie for a bigger bowl game, know they can’t afford to slip up against the Gamecocks. If Auburn wins, that means the Gamecocks will know that standing in front of them and a bowl trip and extra practices are their rivals. What could be better than the two teams facing off with bowl implications?

Now you know who and what to root for. This should be an exciting final two weeks.