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Rex Brown

Clemson's Michael Hamlin (25) tackles an Alabama receiver during the Tigers' loss to Alabama last Saturday at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

CLEMSON — The message Clemson defensive coordinator Vic Koenning sent to his defense during practice this week was simple – tackle, tackle, tackle.

Koenning and his defensive staff figured out that in Alabama’s 54 called rushing plays last Saturday night, 51 times a Clemson defensive player made contact with the ball carrier within a yard of the line of scrimmage. The problem was, however, the Alabama ball carriers just threw the defender off on most occasions, and rumbled another three or four yards before help finally came over.

“We had guys there,” Koenning said. “A big part of it was that we didn’t get more than one guy there because of the way they were double teaming the linemen up and cutting off some of the flow.”

That left Clemson’s linebackers a lot of times in one-on-one situations with the running backs, and in more case than not, the Alabama backs won that battle easily. The Crimson Tide averaged 4.8 yards a carry against Clemson on its way to a 239-yard rushing night.

“A lot of guys were ducking their head and had the play squared up in the hole, but we have to just tackle. We have to tackle,” linebacker Brandon Maye said.

Maye did his part, at least statistically. In the first start of his career, the middle linebacker recorded 12 stops, with the majority of those coming in the first half. His playing time was limited in the second half. Weakside linebacker Kavell Conner had the best day, leading everyone with a career-high 18 tackles.

But after that, no one else in the front seven did much of anything. Stanley Hunter, Maye’s backup was the next closest linebacker in the tackle totals, recording six stops, while defensive tackle Dorell Scott recorded five tackles up front.

Strongside linebackers Scott Cooper and DeAndre McDaniel had just five tackles combined and consistently appeared to have issues wrapping up ball carriers after making contact.

“I think most of it was technique,” Maye said. “I don’t know if it was as much fatigue. People wanted to lay the big hit every time in frustration.

“We have a lot of things to work on.”

And it’s not like the Tigers, who will host The Citadel on Saturday in Death Valley, weren’t already working on tackling. Koenning said they work on tackling drills eight to 10 minutes at every position, every day. However, Maye and safety Michael Hamlin, who had 10 tackles against Alabama, wonder if the Tigers’ scaled-back scrimmages prior to the game had something to do with their lack of physical toughness and tackling issues.

“I feel like it is, but that’s really up to the coaches,” Hamlin said. “If they tell us not to hit somebody then we can’t hit them. If it was up to me, I would be hitting.”

The scaled-back approach came from the top. Head coach Tommy Bowden has used this tactic more than once, in hopes of avoiding serious injuries to marquee players. He has done it the last two springs and two years ago when Gaines Adams was dominating practice on a consistent basis.

“That’s not my call,” Koenning said. “I think Coach Bowden is as good as any coach in America in taking recommendations and stuff… The amount of scrimmaging and all that stuff, we try to do what we can. From being a head coach too, if you do that all the time, you get diminishing returns because you could get (C.J.) Spiller hurt and what if Jacoby Ford and Aaron Kelly get banged up, you don’t want to do that either.”

But no team wants to play defense the way Clemson did in the Georgia Dome either. And for that, Koenning says there are no excuses for what happened.

“I take responsibility in teaching tackling, and we did not do a good job limiting yards after contact,” he said. “That was critical. There were three and four yards every time. That was 99.9 percent of it… We have to find a better way of getting our power base behind us and not lunging. There were also just misses, I mean plain misses where somebody else had to go make them three or four yards down the line. There was just too much of that too.

“We had guys in the backfield, and we just couldn’t make a play.”