CLEMSON’S WINDOW CLOSING
Time is now for Tigers, who could lag in ’17
Urban Meyer can admit now that there was a moment last offseason when he felt his mind drift toward 2017, when a gifted yet largely untested Ohio State team would acquire the sort of experience seemingly required to win the national championship.
“I try to avoid that all the time,” he said of that mind-set, but it was almost unavoidable: Ohio State had the pieces to win the national title, yet the core of its roster leaned toward youth and inexperience. After all, the Buckeyes had lost 16 starters from last season’s team, including an NFL-record 10 players taken in the first three rounds of April’s draft.
“This young team is going to be a mature team,” Meyer said, but it would be a process, and
the process might take time.
Saturday, however, the Buckeyes will meet Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl, two wins shy of the program’s second championship during the Meyer era. These facts are not incompatible: Ohio State can at once be young, maybe a year ahead of schedule, and still be in line for a national title.
“It sounds so cliché, but you don’t rebuild, you reload,” co-defensive coordinator Greg Schiano said, and so the Buckeyes have. At Ohio State, one of college football’s truly elite programs, the window never closes; it might widen one year and shrink the next, but it’s forever open, and perhaps never more consistently so than during Meyer’s five-year run.
“It’s just the culture,” senior center Pat Elflein said. “It’s a freight train. You know and you have trust that it’s going to get done.”
There are many themes and trends that bind Ohio State with Clemson, from offensive philosophies rooted in similar concepts through a tenacious approach to talent evaluation and development. Yet as the two teams prepare for the national semifinal, there is one crucial difference.
The first team, Ohio State, can feel confident in its ability to make a return trip to the College Football Playoff in 2017 and beyond — to match this year’s success again and again despite a changing cast. The same program is built upon a mentality: As good as we are today, we’ll be even better tomorrow.
“There’s always a next group ready to go,” cornerbacks coach Kerry Coombs said. “So we’re going to have guys going this year, the NFL is going to take ’em, and you know what? We’re going to replace them with really good guys and get ready to play.”
The second team, Clemson, should hold no misconceptions. There is an immense sense of urgency surrounding this program, driven by the idea that as good as the Tigers are today — and they’re superb, guided by one of the most talented rosters in college football — it might never get better than this.
In other words, and in contrast with Ohio State, there is no tomorrow for Clemson, nor any dreaming of what might lie ahead. What makes this year different is how a rare confluence of positive factors, from the talents of quarterback Deshaun Watson and his NFL-bound cohorts through the ability to maintain a surprising degree of continuity on the coaching staff, might not be replicated.
“We realize how fragile a season it is and how huge of an opportunity we have,” senior linebacker Ben Boulware said.
After this season, the Tigers will lose Boulware, center Jay Guillermo, tight end Jordan Leggett, cornerback Cordrea Tankersley and defensive tackle Christian Wilkins, all seniors. It’s widely expected that juniors Mike Williams, Artavis Scott and Wayne Gallman will give up their final seasons of eligibility to enter the NFL draft.
As will Watson, this season’s Heisman Trophy runner-up and, according to quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter, “a one-in-20year kid.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying to people, because that’s what he is,” Streeter said. “We’re in a neat time. It’s pretty special.”
Watson will be impossible to replace, even if the Tigers hold verbal commitments from topranked quarterbacks in each of the next two recruiting classes. He is a transcendent talent, one with the ability to turn a great team or program into an elite one — as he has as a sophomore and junior.
This is not to say that Clemson is going anywhere, particularly given how the Tigers have won countless toe-to-toe battles with college football’s traditional elite for some of the nation’s top recruits. Having made such strides under coach Dabo Swinney, the Tigers have no plans on relinquishing their seat at the table.
Three years ago, for example, there were fears that Clemson would tumble back toward irrelevance after the departure of quarterback Tajh Boyd, wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins and running back Andre Ellington — yet that group’s level of success drew Watson, Williams and others into the program, and the process was renewed.
“We’re really excited about the next chapter,” said Jeff Scott, Clemson’s co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach.
And like Ohio State, the Tigers staff has grasped the sport’s shifting landscape, where it has become more and more common for talented underclassmen to depart for the NFL rather than complete their eligibility. “You can’t think in a traditional four-year cycle,” Schiano said of the Buckeyes’ approach.
More talent will come to Clemson, as it will to Ohio State; five-star prospects will replace five-star prospects. But the Tigers should be aware of what’s at stake: This window for championship contention might have an expiration date.
“So the challenge, really, for that group is that this thing is going to end at some point,” Scott said. “Y’all have accomplished a lot of unbelievable things, have set national records, school records, ACC records, but at some point this thing ’s going to end.
“The question is, how do we want it to end?”