Keep it up, put it on repeat
No. 1 seed Clemson, calling itself ‘the attacking champs,’ is built to stay at the top
CHARLOTTE, N.C.— Concentrate, for the moment, on what can’t be disputed, not after this 38-3 pasting Clemson laid on Miami on Saturday night. What we know about the College Football Playoff: Clemson has to be the favourite.
Consider that status going forward, a month from now, and then think back to the past three seasons. Who does it better than the Tigers? Alabama, you say, and with good reason. We’ll get the chance to determine that for the third straight year in a playoff rubber match. But Alabama didn’t play on Saturday. So right now, in personnel, preparation, execution and downright swagger, we give you Clemson — defending national champions who don’t consider themselves that at all.
“We’re the attacking champs,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. “We’re attacking for another one.”
Cover your eyes, then, because Clemson doesn’t just have a team to win it this year. It has an operation set up to contend for years and years. The team that won the Tigers’ second national title had its quarterback (Deshaun Watson) and top receiver (Mike Williams) taken among the first dozen picks in the NFL draft, and Swinney spent most of the offseason fending off more questions about who was gone than who was here.
“Everything coming into the spring was ‘Oh, man, you won a national championship, how do you stay focused?’ ” Swinney said early Sunday morning. “It was just like we had checked the box and we were just going to stop working at Clemson. Like, what else? We’re just going to go lay on the beach or something.”
If the Tigers are lying on the beach, they’re finding players there. Think about what they have, what with Kelly Bryant capably stepping in for Watson — he completed 23 of 29 passes against Miami — and a ridiculous number of NFL-worthy defenders. Of the 61 players Clemson listed on its depth chart before the game, five are in their final year of eligibility. Now, players such as defensive linemen Clelin Ferrell and Christian Wilkins could easily leave early. Still. “It shows they’re the class of our league,” Miami coach Mark Richt said. “They’re the measuring stick.”
Clemson might be a burgeoning dynasty. The Tigers hadn’t won three consecutive ACC titles since the late 1980s.
But this group, with Swinney preaching from the pulpit of preparation and execution, feels like it has staying power. This will be Clemson’s third straight appearance in the playoff. Two years ago, the Tigers lost to Alabama in the national title game. Clemson’s record in that time: 40-3. “They’re big, strong, physical, fast, well-coached,” Richt said, going down the checklist. “They’re as good as anybody in America.”
The next five weeks could serve to prove they’re better than anybody in America, not just in a single season, but over a period of years. Think about that journey. A decade ago, it wasn’t at all foreseeable.
Six games into the 2008 season, the fourth in which the ACC staged a championship game, Tommy Bowden resigned as Clemson’s coach. The choice made by then-athletic director Terry Don Phillips was to bypass two former head coaches on staff — Brad Scott and Vic Koenning — and hand the interim job to a former walk-on wide receiver at Alabama, Swinney, who was all of 38, and then to essentially say, “Ah, the heck with it,” and hand Swinney the full-time job.
If Clemson fans are being honest, this was not universally well received.
In a period of insane coaching upheaval — Florida State really lost its coach to Texas A&M? Tennessee was really turned down by the North Carolina State coach? — Swinney is beginning to rival Nick Saban as a model of stability. Plus, he’s 18 years younger than Saban. And whatever you think about the SEC being “down,” it’s still inarguably easier to navigate to a title in the ACC.
Swinney knows his team’s outlook, and that is this: “Regardless of who we play, if we play the right way, then we think we have a chance to win.”
Clemson, so frequently, plays the right way. So maybe the more interesting debate isn’t Alabama-Ohio State. Maybe it’s about which coach has the best program in the country right now.