Clemson’s defense didn’t look like itself in one particular area against Florida State.

Despite the Tigers have their entire two-deep intact along the defensive line for the first time all season, FSU wasn’t shy about running into the teeth of the Tigers’ defense. That’s because the Seminoles didn’t often get much resistance from the nation’s No. 2 run defense entering the game.

FSU ran for 44 yards on the opening possession of the game and continued to churn out yards on the ground. The Seminoles finished with 206 rushing yards on 6.1 yards per pop, easily the most a Clemson defense yielding less than 63 on average coming in has given up all season.

After watching the film Sunday, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said there was a glaring issue: 24 missed tackles.

“I don’t know when the last time we had that many missed tackles,” Swinney said.

The Tigers had a number of players up front and on the back end that were returning from injuries, including defensive tackle Bryan Bresee and safeties R.J. Mickens and Tyler Venables, which Swinney and defensive coordinator Wesley Goodwin acknowledged made them a bit rusty in that department. But Swinney said there were plenty of uncharacteristic examples of players who were in position to make tackles simply using poor technique or whiffing all together.

Jordan Travis’ touchdown run to cap the Seminoles’ opening drive was a good example. FSU’s fleet-footed quarterback kept on a zone read play. Barrett Carter was waiting on him, but Travis gave Clemson’s sophomore linebacker a shimmy before cutting inside and outracing the rest of the Tigers’ defense 20 yards to the end zone.

“It was not a good night for us tackling-wise,” Swinney said. “(When we had) guys in the holes, if you get them down right there, it’s a 2-yard gain. Instead, it’s 15. And then we had a couple of times where we were out of position and didn’t have quite maybe the right angle, but we’ll get it corrected.”

Nick Eason, who’s in his first season as Clemson’s defensive run-game coordinator, was also critical of the technique the Tigers played with up front.

“We had over 20 missed tackles, misfits on several runs, and we just didn’t play really good football,” Eason said. “We’ve got to do a better job of getting back to the basics and working on technique and fundamentals. That’s what makes the schemes work, just being able to do the little things.”

Eason put some of the blame on himself. A former defensive tackle, Eason also coaches the position at Clemson, one that’s widely viewed as one of the strongest on the Tigers’ roster considering talent, experience and depth they have there with Bresee, senior Tyler Davis and juniors Ruke Orhorhoro and Tre Williams among others.

There were times, Eason said, that Clemson’s defensive linemen simply didn’t get off blocks.

“Those guys got after us,” Eason said of FSU’s offensive line. “The game of football comes down to one-on-one matchups. You can draw it up any way you want, but it’s going to come down to you winning your one-on-one matchup, and that’s going to be the case every single week. There were times they just matched us up and wanted it more than we wanted it, and that showed up on tape.

“Up front and on the back end, they made some plays. But it starts up front. So I’ve got to do a better job of challenging our guys. I put a lot of pressure on the guys up front of, hey, we’ve got to do a great job of knocking things back, getting off blocks up front and creating clear lanes for our linebackers to come downhill and make plays. I just think we didn’t do a consistent good job of that.”

Things don’t figure to get any easier this week when Clemson takes on unbeaten Syracuse and the ACC’s fifth-ranked rushing offense Saturday at Memorial Stadium.

Dear Old Clemson is excited to announce a limited edition football and poster signed by Clemson’s Avengers.

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