REMATCH ON SLATE
Clemson and Alabama face off in Playoff Final
Keys to victory
By the numbers
Dual- threat QBs
Christian Wilkins was a defensive tackle from Springfield, Mass., playing at Suffield (Conn.) Academy when Clemson finally came calling during his junior season.
Thought Wilkins: What took you so long? He’d always wanted to take a look at Clemson and see what the program had to offer, so he was excited when defensive coordinator Brent Venables and two defensive assistants, Dan Brooks and Marion Hobby, came north to meet the standout defensive lineman.
It was cold, Wilkins remembered from their first visit, but not that cold. Yet there were the Clemson threesome of coaches, bundled up in their orange letterman jackets. “That image stands with me forever,” Wilkins said.
“They recruited me harder than any other school, so it was easy for me to make my decision to go where I was wanted so much.”
Wilkins’ recruitment came at a time when Clemson was
still closing the gap between itself and the elite teams in college football. It also fit a theme that binds Clemson and Alabama, which meet Monday night to decide the national championship.
There are many reasons the Crimson Tide and Tigers find themselves back in the College Football Playoff title game despite a significant offseason overhaul of personnel. One of the biggest is defensive line play, and in particular each program’s ability to quickly and effectively replace one set of large, strong, quick, agile and fast 300-pound stars with another.
“We’ve been fortunate here to have some pretty good ones, and I know Clemson has some really good ones as well,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said. “That’s probably why they’ve been pretty successful, and it’s probably a big reason that we’ve been pretty successful.”
Alabama’s A’Shawn Robinson and Jarran Reed departed for the NFL after the 2015 season, begetting Dalvin Tomlinson, Da’Ron Payne and the emergence of Jonathan Allen as college football’s best defensive player. The Tide haven’t missed a beat.
Clemson’s Shaq Lawson and Kevin Dodd left a year ahead of schedule. But the Tigers had Wilkins, Carlos Watkins, true freshman Dexter Lawrence and Fiesta Bowl defensive MVP Clelin Ferrell ready for their moments in the spotlight.
“There are a lot of skill guys out there around the country that you can find,” said Pittsburgh coach Pat Narduzzi, formerly a longtime defensive coordinator. “The guys that are hard to find are the D-linemen. There aren’t a lot of those guys running around. There aren’t a lot of them out there that are difference-makers.”
Added new Oregon coach Willie Taggart: “Everybody has skill players. But to win championships, you have to have those guys up front.”
Both Clemson and Alabama — and most programs across the Football Bowl Subdivision — recruit defensive linemen like they do quarterbacks, putting a full-court press on those rare athletes with the size to stop the run and the athleticism to disrupt offensive game plans at the point of attack.
Remarkable athletic talent marks both teams’ lines. Lawrence said when he was growing up he sought out footraces against people a fraction of his size. Venables remembers Lawrence picking off a screen pass in one of his first practices with the Tigers and nearly returning it for a score before being chased down by receiver Hunter Renfrow. For all the pressure it puts on quarterbacks and running backs, Venables said, the Clemson line’s favorite thing to do in games is drop into pass coverage.
Taggart remembers facing the Tide when he was Western Kentucky’s head coach and realizing what the Hilltoppers were up against when he saw an Alabama defensive tackle catching punts one-handed. This season, Tomlinson said, Allen’s flying sack of Texas A&M quarterback Trevor Knight on Oct. 22 has been one of most-watched replays in team meetings. “The special ones jump off the film,” said Auburn coach Gus Malzahn, whose team opened the regular season against Clemson and closed it against Alabama.
Lawrence was the nation’s No. 1 recruit in the class of 2016. Wilkins, a sophomore, was a fivestar recruit in 2015, and Ferrell a four-star prospect in the same class. Payne and redshirt sophomore Da’Shawn Hand were fivestar recruits, joining a slew of other Alabama signees ranked among the best at their respective positions; Saban and his staff routinely pull in the nation’s topranked signing class.
“Everybody wants them,” Venables said. “They’re coveted by everybody. We need them. We don’t have one committed in this class yet. But that’s where it all starts.”
But not every Alabama or Clemson standout arrives on campus able to contribute from the start — in fact, Lawrence is one of the exceptions, as a 340pound rookie built to give offensive linemen fits despite his lack of experience.
Venables points to Watkins as a player who worked his way into an all-conference starter. Watkins played 113 snaps as a true freshman in 2012, missed most of 2013 after a car accident and took 135 snaps in 2014. It wasn’t until last season that he moved into a key role up front and quickly became one of the top linemen in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Allen actually arrived at Alabama as an outside linebacker before growing into a 294-pound defensive end pegged to be taken among the first handful of picks in this spring ’s NFL draft.
Though the results suggest otherwise, not every Alabama or Clemson lineman comes straight from central casting: Each program looks for specific attributes it believes fit their defensive formula — looking as much at potential as at current production.
“To find guys that are athletic enough to play that position but still strong enough and stout enough to be able to play gaps and play blocks and control the line of scrimmage is even more challenging than it’s ever been before,” Saban said.
That’s because Alabama and Clemson aren’t alone. Every program with eyes on the national title identifies and chases these sorts of recruits, aware that the road to the Playoff begins along the line of scrimmage.
Venables said he doesn’t think you can have a national championship team if you don’t have a dominant defensive line. “If you get overwhelmed up front, it’s a wrap,” he said. “You’re going to be on the losing side of it. It takes the ability to hold at the point of attack and win your fair share to have a realistic chance to win it.”
The Tigers and Tide do it better than the rest. Clemson’s defensive front shredded Ohio State’s game plan in the Fiesta Bowl. Alabama’s eviscerated Washington’s offensive line and dismantled the Huskies’ timing in the Peach Bowl.
Now they will meet again, with a number of differences from this point a year ago — a new quarterback for Alabama, for example, and new faces on both sides of the ball for Clemson — but one key similarity.
That the two best teams in college football hold the two best defensive lines is “not by coincidence,” Malzahn said.
“Both defenses have the wow factor. There’s no doubt. And that’s what it takes to get to the final game.”