Miami forecast: Mas de lo mismo

SoBe – Ocean breeze. Sunshine. Palm trees. Highs in the upper 80s, lows in the 70s.

Now this is football weather.

OK, maybe not from where we come from. But having endured rain and dreary conditions at every Clemson home game so far this season, tropical warm is a welcome change.

This is also what Christmas was like in the Strelow household, as my late grandma lived about two blocks off the beach in Fort Lauderdale. The main personal attraction to this trip for me was seeing how and if the new owners had modernized her home (beyond the presumed gutting of the lime green shag carpet).

Come to think of it, that’s my measure for the Tigers this trip, too (no, not the carpet, although it might have been older than 39-year-old head coach Dabo Swinney).

Will this be the same Clemson road team that, as it did in its first two away games this year, comes out sedated? The one where Kyle Parker is erratic? And a receiving corpse? And a defense that wilts when momentum starts building against it? The one where Swinney & Co. try coaching the Tigers out of it with a few calls that backfire horribly?

Or will this be an extension of the Clemson team that came to a head last week? That was a perfect storm the likes of which I think would be unfair to set as the weekly standard. But we finally saw the Tigers successfully do some things from a play-calling and execution standpoint that they arguably could have been doing from the outset of the season.

For a while, I have thought Clemson matches up with No. 8 Miami as well as anyone in the league. The Tigers have the defensive front and secondary to challenge Miami’s diverse passing game. And beyond that passing game, the Hurricanes aren’t anything special, either along the offensive line or on defense in general.

But before the Maryland debacle, we swore off analyzing the match-ups because with the Tigers, it has so rarely been about that. So we’re sticking with consistency.

Here’s thinking Clemson gives Miami a serious run Saturday. But its vulnerabilities in underneath pass coverage will make the difference.

An upset victory wouldn’t surprise me in the least. But for the sake of putting my name to a prediction, I can’t ignore my unofficial slogan for the 2009 season: Until proven otherwise …

Until the Tigers prove they can handle fourth-quarter pressure and beat a top team, they’re still gonna be the equivalent to my grandma’s house.

A property with great potential and some ideal amenities. But somebody has some interior work to do in order to bring said property up to market value.

(By the way, “Mas de lo mismo” translates to “more of the same” in Spanish).

PREDICTION: MIAMI 27, CLEMSON 24