ACC needs innovation on offense

Count me among those convinced that Clemson athletic director Terry Don Phillips is luring Tiger football fans into a gripe session during his interview process for a new head coach.

If the popular speculation is correct, among Phillips' top targets are Brent Venables (Oklahoma defensive assistant), Bud Foster (Virginia Tech defensive guru) and recently released Oakland Raiders coach Lane Kiffin.

All three are legitimate candidates, and it defies logic that Foster hasn't yet landed a head coaching job somewhere.

But what Clemson really needs -- what the ACC needs -- at this point is a person on the cutting edge of offense. If that's not what Phillips actually has in mind once the regular season ends, I'd be shocked.

Give me Mike Leach (Texas Tech), Gary Patterson (Texas Christian), Steve Logan (Boston College offensive coordinator), Brady Hoke (Ball State) or Kyle Whittingham (Utah), but make it someone with head coaching experience at the major college level and someone who has at least a feel for innovative scoring tactics.

The biggest problem with ACC football during the past few years has been a lack of offensive vision.

Here's what I mean: With a couple of weeks left in the regular season, there's not a clear-cut list of contenders for the league's offensive player-of-the-year award. Entering this weekend's games, my vote easily could go to N.C. State quarterback Russell Wilson, who sat out two games and most of a third as a result of injuries. The level of defensive coaching and player personnel in the league is good, but it can't possibly be so good that the offenses are that overwhelmed.

About seven or eight seasons back, the ACC drifted into a trend of playing dot-to-dot offense, which is just another way of saying the teams became so conservative that the prevailing theory was not so much trying to win as it was trying to avoid a loss.

The end result of that trend has been a limited offensive gene pool. The coaching has improved from the perspective of staffing, organization and defensive development, but no one other than Logan has really pressed the envelop since the day Florida State's Bobby Bowden lost Mark Richt as his offensive coordinator.

The departure of Richt to coach Georgia changed motives. When FSU started playing "ACC Football," there was really no incentive for other teams to find a way to outscore the Seminoles, meaning "Don't catch them; let them come back to us."

It's reached the point now that the ACC has several average-to-slightly-above-average teams, and FSU has joined the crowd. But no team is capable of consistently moving into national title contention.

That's not going to change until a school -- maybe Clemson -- breaks the mold by taking the initiative on offense. It's time for an ACC school to start acting, rather than reacting in football.