Wednesday AM Notes

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-- Dabo Swinney announced Tuesday morning that redshirt sophomore offensive lineman Blake Vinson will miss the remainder of the season due to an injury to the patella tendon.

The injury will require surgery, Swinney said, and the staff is hoping Vinson will be able to get the year back.

"They are going to go ahead and fix that ligament on the side of his knee cap just so he doesn’t have to deal with this. Go ahead and do it now, so he is ready to go and fully recovered and ready to go for spring practice. I hate that for Blake."

Vinson has played 79 snaps in 11 games as a Tiger entering the 2019 season. Swinney also added that Vinson could potentially be eligible for a sixth year if he wanted it, so there are some positives down the road.

Freshman offensive lineman Will Putnam, who co-offensive coordinator Tony Elliott told us the staff was planning on holding out for a redshirt this year, will be filling in for Vinson the rest of the way. Tremayne Anchrum said Putnam has come a long way since he got to Clemson and should continue to make strides in his new role.

“He’s a worker. He’s one of the hardest workers I have ever seen,” Anchrum said. “He’s real disciplined and he loves to get better every day. That’s something you love to see: a guy that wants to get better and a guy that wants to compete. He’s young and he’s still going through some mistakes as an early kid, but I really am surprised that he’s picked it up as fast as he has as a player.”

-- Jackson Carman had some pretty high praise for Charlotte defensive lineman Alex Highsmith.

We’ll have more on Carman and his maturation process later, but it’s a fair estimation that Carman is shaping up to be such a force at left tackle. This coming a year after the sturdy Mitch Hyatt left the program.

Carman told us Tuesday morning that he doesn’t know how many times he’s put the man in front of him on the turn, but he has kept track of who leads the unit in knockdowns. 

Spoiler alert: it’s Carman.

The Tigers have faced some pretty talented dudes on the defensive line so far this season. Tyree Johnson, in particular, from Texas A&M had six tackles, including a sack, against Clemson.

“He was good at the speed rush,” Carman said. “So at the beginning of the game we kind of went up and I smashed him, got him down on the ground. The second rep I kind of stalemated him. And then he started speed rushing hard. I was like kind of not trusting my sets. Then when he got around the corner, I opened my hips. He got underneath my pads and tried to power me. That’s when I stepped on Trevor’s leg. After that I really worked on getting out of my stance better and stuff like that. I feel like the following game against Syracuse I did a lot better with the speed rush.”

But that wasn’t the best player Carman said he’s faced this season. That honor belongs to Highsmith, the 6-foot-4 lineman from UNC-Charlotte who has 11 tackles and five sacks on the season.

“He was a dude,” Carman said. “I’ve been playing football for 12 years and he’s by far the fastest off the ball I’ve ever gone against. Ever.”

Faster than Xavier Thomas?

“Right now, I’d say so.”

Woah.

-- The one negative from Clemson’s 52-10 win over Charlotte on Saturday was the run defense at times.

The Tigers gave up 153 rushing yards against the 49ers, this one week after giving up 15 yards total to Syracuse the week before. Dabo Swinney has said Benny Lemay, who had 81 yards on 18 carries, was the best running back Clemson will face all season.

But Swinney has since added that North Carolina has the best running back group by far that the Tigers will face. The linebackers and backend of Clemson’s defense have had their own struggles making open-field tackles at times, but something that they’ve improved on since August camp ended.

“Especially after that first week against Georgia Tech. We didn’t do a very good job tackling.” Jake Venables said. “We’ve just been every day at practice and even after practice just really working on our fundamentals.

“We knew the whole week that Charlotte was a really good rushing team and coach Swinney and my dad (Brent Venables), they were telling us all week they were going to have a couple big plays here and there but we had to do a really good job of containing them and the quarterback, too.”

Jake said that is doesn’t matter who rotates in for North Carolina as long as the defense can do their jobs and make sure they can make their rotations as well.

“We gotta do a good job of keeping everyone flowing. We did a really good job last week of bringing guys in when someone is a little fatigued...No drop-off.”