Steelers, Packers advance in routs
Red-hot teams brave cold weather to move on to Divisional round
This was clearly the reason James Harrison, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 38-year-old linebacker, came back for a 14th NFL season.
His team is still in the hunt for another Lombardi Trophy. This might be his last chance. Reminded of this as he sauntered through a tunnel at Heinz Field after a 30-12 spanking of the Miami Dolphins that was never in doubt, Harrison — who had a remarkable game with 10 tackles, 11⁄ sacks and a forced 2 fumble — refused to get too far ahead of the situation.
“It’s one game,” Harrison told USA TODAY Sports.
That’s veteran perspective. This time of year, one game is all you get until the next one.
But at least the Steelers will head to the Kansas City Chiefs for the AFC divisional playoffs with another layer of momentum. Pittsburgh has the NFL’s longest winning streak, eight games. And its performance Sunday contained some key ele-
As a January enrollee out of high school, the first days of Jalen Hurts’ experience at Alabama were spent pretending to be Deshaun Watson. It was a crucial aspect of the Crimson Tide’s preparation to face Clemson in last year’s College Football Playoff title game, as Hurts provided the closest approximation to the athletic ability they’d see at the quarterback position.
But when they meet as competitors Monday for a national title, they’ll approach the moment not just with different skill sets and levels of experience but fundamentally opposite views of who are they are as quarterbacks.
In an interview session before the Peach Bowl semifinal game, Hurts repeatedly referred to himself as a dual-threat quarterback, a seemingly simple acknowledgment that his running ability — 891 yards on 181 carries for the season — is the primary reason Alabama’s offense has hummed along with an 18-year-old true freshman under center.
That assessment contrasts with Watson, who made headlines in a preseason interview with Bleacher Report by rejecting the label, calling it racially coded.
“I think Deshaun has worked his whole life to be a quarterback, and I don’t think he wants to be pigeonholed into one aspect of the position,” Clemson co-offensive coordinator Tony Elliott said. “He wants to be respected for what quarterbacks are respected for — his ability to make decisions, his ability to make throws — and that’s what Deshaun wants people to focus on. He’s gifted enough to run and athletic enough to extend some plays.”
That understanding is useful in the total analysis of Watson’s college career.
The first glimpse of him in a Clemson uniform came in Athens, Ga. He had come off the bench after three consecutive three-and-outs, revealing his fivestar talent on the first handful of plays with a 29-yard frozen rope to Mike Williams and a 30-yard scoring pass to Charone Peake.
But it wasn’t until last year’s national championship game, when Watson torched Alabama’s defense for 405 passing yards while also running 20 times for 73 yards, that he became the face of college football and, presumably, a future No. 1 NFL draft pick, given his combination of size, skills and leadership ability.
After a summer of magazine covers, preseason awards and in- sane expectations, Watson’s comments about the dual-threat label provided an interesting subtext to the start of Clemson’s season when, by his standards, he struggled. Clemson coaches took great care to project the message that nothing was amiss, but Watson’s interceptions piled up (he has 17 coming into the title game) and his accuracy on downfield passes seemed to have regressed.
Meanwhile, the Tigers’ playcalling seemed to have shifted away from emphasizing quarterback runs, something Watson did an average of 18 times per game in the second half of last season. This season, Watson hasn’t had a game with more than 17 carries.
“I don’t make the game plan,” Watson said. “If I have to run the ball, I run the ball. If I have to pass it, I pass it. If I just get the ball to my skill guys, hey, that’s what I’ll do. My job is to be the quarterback, and the label stuff, I leave it to the fans and media.”
Elliott said there was no correlation between Watson’s preseason comments and running him less often, though he acknowledged that, as Clemson got deeper into the season and now to the championship game, the approach is “all hands on deck.”
“When you say dual-threat, that makes me smile, but there’s a difference,” Clemson quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter said. “Some guys that are dualthreat are runners first and they are very average at throwing the ball and making decisions, so they’re put in that category, and some people put Deshaun in that category, too. The more people watch him, it’s very obvious that he’s a quarterback first and he’s a better passer (than runner).”
Striking in this debate is that the threat of Watson taking off and running is what makes him a difficult matchup for the Tide — and, by extension, why Saban recruited a player such as Hurts.
Alabama has won four of the last seven national titles, but the quarterbacks who have given the defenses the most trouble share a trait. From Cam Newton to Johnny Manziel to Nick Marshall to Chad Kelly and finally Watson, quarterbacks with athleticism to extend plays, execute run-pass option plays and improvise when necessary have been the antidote to Saban’s dominance.
Hurts has shown he’s not yet a polished passer — analytics site CFBfilmroom.com has Hurts completing 30% of his passes under pressure and 42% vs. the seven best defenses he has faced — but his speed and instincts running the ball have added a different dimension for Alabama.
“In the beginning at Alabama and other places that we’ve been, (we had) sort of a pro-style approach on offense, so we looked for a pro-style quarterback and maybe didn’t put the emphasis on athleticism,” Saban said. “Then when we played with Blake Sims (in 2014), who was a very good athlete, we sort of said, ‘Look, the way college football has changed, the way offense has changed, it creates issues defensively when you have an athletic quarterback who still has to be able to throw the ball effectively.’ … I think we philosophically changed a bit, and Jalen certainly fit that, but I think we would have recruited Jalen 10 years ago because we were impressed with him as a passer as well.”
Hurts doesn’t see dual-threat as a negative label but says he’s not a run-first quarterback. “You don’t want to create that image. You want someone to say, ‘He’s a quarterback that can run.’ I feel like I’m a quarterback who has the ability to run.”
The only label that matters Monday is national champ. There will be time before the draft for NFL scouts and commentators to debate what Watson can do at the next level. Regardless of how the game turns out, he’ll be remembered as the best quarterback in Clemson history and the player who made Swinney’s vision of elite-level success a reality.
“Deshaun Watson is as complete a quarterback as I’ve ever been around and probably ever will be,” Swinney said. “This kid is brilliant. He’s unbelievable. His football IQ, his preparation, the way he goes to work every day, his skill set. He can make any throw. (Those who consider him a runfirst quarterback), it’s just a lack of people doing their due diligence, really. It’s people who don’t really understand what they’re talking about.”