College football wrap-up
Weekend’s good/bad, plus coaching update
For the first time in the College Football Playoff era, Alabama isn’t going to be in the mix for a national championship.
Maybe we already knew that before Saturday. But it wasn’t completely official until the Crimson Tide lost a one-of-akind Iron Bowl to Auburn 48-45 and took themselves off the board for a selection committee whose love for ’Bama has been unconditional for five straight years.
With no good wins, two losses, no conference title and a defense that has been far from elite this season, there’s nothing to argue about regarding Alabama and the Playoff. But it does usher in a totally new conversation surrounding the Crimson Tide: What now?
On one hand, you can look at this Alabama season through the prism of bad luck and injury and just chalk it up to one of those years where nothing really went right. From preseason camp when the Tide lost star linebacker Dylan Moses to Tua Tagovailoa’s high ankle sprain and eventual hip surgery, Alabama had more adversity than usual and still went 10-2 with combined losses by eight points against top-15 teams.
On the other hand, there are signs Alabama is entering one of those critical crossroads where Nick Saban needs to figure out what the program’s identity is going to be.
After Alabama lost to Clemson and Deshaun Watson in the 2016 season national championship game, it began a stylistic evolution that has culminated three years later with a team that scored more than 40 points against its two biggest Southeastern Conference rivals and lost both games.
You can point to all kinds of issues including the missed 30yard field goal attempt with two minutes left that would have tied the score to Alabama’s 13 penalties against Auburn, but does Saban really want to play football this way? Does he really believe that trying to outscore people is the best way to win national titles? Of course not.
Because of the way teams like Clemson and Auburn have used the spread offense and the arrival of a quarterback as gifted as Tagovailoa in his program, Saban felt the need to evolve and play more aggressively. But he has to be thinking today that maybe he went too far.
This season, Alabama arguably had the most talented group of wide receivers that has ever been assembled on a college campus. What did it get them? An Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl bid that their fans and their NFL-bound players aren’t going to care about?
Alabama has become way more fun to watch over the last couple of years with a team built around the freewheeling Tagovailoa rather than the boa constrictor approach of a dominant defense, a sound running game and a quarterback who won’t make mistakes. But they’ve also become more vulnerable, and now that Alabama has gone two straight years without winning the national title, it will be interesting to see if Saban starts to revert next season to the approach he has always felt more comfortable with.
Other observations from the final week of college football’s regular season.
Utah remains in better position than Oklahoma
Barring a major injury or major upset in the conference championship games, there’s really only one possible controversy for the Playoff selection committee to reckon with.
If LSU beats Georgia, Ohio
State beats Wisconsin and Clemson beats Virginia, three of the four spots will be locked in. The fourth spot then would either go to the winner of Oklahoma-Baylor or Utah if the Utes beat Oregon in the Pac-12 title game.
If that scenario plays out, advantage Utah. Why? The eye test.
While Oklahoma might have more good wins on paper and a more traditional brand name, it’s been an adventure nearly every week late in the season, though Saturday’s 34-16 win at Oklahoma State became comfortable by the end. The Sooners are obviously a good team, but because of how many mistakes they make on both sides of the ball, they don’t always project tremendous confidence.
Utah, on the other hand, doesn’t have a great win yet – in fact, beating Oregon on Friday night would be their best by a significant margin – but the Utes beat mediocre opponents the way a good team is supposed to. Even after starting a little bit tight against Colorado and falling behind 7-0, the Utes scored the next 31 points and cruised to a 45-15 win, holding the Buffaloes to 216 total yards.
The Utes have speed, and they’re big on the line of scrimmage in ways that suggest they could compete physically with an Ohio State or LSU. Is that a perfect way to judge a team? No. But Oklahoma has been shaky enough that you can’t automatically give them the benefit of the doubt just because they’ve been there before.
As of now, if things go according to form, the Utes could very well be one win from making the Playoff.
Michigan needs to part ways with Don Brown
Anyone out there screaming about how Jim Harbaugh needs to be fired after Saturday’s 56-27 loss to Ohio State is flatly missing the point. It’s not going to happen, period, nor should it. Maybe Harbaugh decides he’s had enough at some point and goes on to do something else, but Michigan is a healthy program that is in much better shape under him than it was between 2005 to 2014. He’s not going to lose his job. But when you’re 0-5 against your biggest rival, it is imperative to respond with changes. One of those changes should be the dismissal of defensive coordinator Don Brown.
Though Brown has unquestionably built a reputation as one of the best in the business at what he does, it is clear his scheme is not built for success
against Ohio State. If you remove the last five minutes of garbage time and end-of-half possessions, the Buckeyes have scored touchdowns on 15 of 22 possessions against Michigan over the last two years. That’s an outright embarrassment for a Michigan team that came into Saturday ranked No. 3 nationally on defense in yards per play and finished No. 8 last season.
Because Brown’s scheme is so heavily based on man coverage, there’s kind of a boom-orbust quality to its results. Against a team like Ohio State that has more overall speed and talent, the inability to adjust is glaring.
It must be said, Michigan’s futility in this series isn’t just a Harbaugh problem. Post-2000, Michigan has beaten the Buckeyes just twice. But it’s Harbaugh’s responsibility to figure out how to close that gap. Since it’s awfully hard to make up ground in the talent department on a recruiting behemoth like Ohio State, all options about how to proceed with his coaching staff need to be on the table, including a change at defensive coordinator.
Clemson has become joyless for no reason whatsoever
The rise of Clemson from solid program to national champion to budding dynasty has been perceived as a joyful, freewheeling enterprise, especially when contrasted against the robotic dominance of Alabama. But for some reason, this season has been framed by grievance and anger, and it doesn’t wear particularly well on Dabo Swinney.
Clemson finished off another perfect regular season Saturday with a 38-3 win at South Carolina and will attempt to lock up its fifth straight Atlantic Coast Conference title next weekend against Virginia. Barring one of the biggest upsets of the season, Clemson is going to cruise into the College Football Playoff playing as well as anyone in the country and have a great chance to win a historic third national title in the last four years. Yet after the game, Swinney played the paranoia card regarding his team being ranked No. 3 in the CFP standings behind Ohio State and LSU. He also seems to be fixated on months-old commentary after Clemson escaped a scare against North Carolina in which it had to stop a two-point conversion to preserve victory.
“Obviously if we lose this game, they’re gonna kick us out,” Swinney told reporters. “They don’t want us in there anyway. I mean, we’d drop to 20, you know? I mean, Georgia
loses to this very same team and the very next day it’s how do we keep Georgia in it? We win to the team that beat South Carolina and it’s how do we get Clemson out? It’s the dadgumest thing. So it’s big because they can’t vote us out. We’ve got to go 30-0. We ain’t got no choice.”
Maybe this is all a show to keep his team on edge because the regular season has been a series of de facto exhibitions against overmatched opponents.
But whether it’s genuine or manufactured, it’s just odd to hear Swinney drone on and on about how much people are disrespecting Clemson when it’s just not true at this moment in the season.
Everyone understands how good Clemson is and how well the Tigers are playing, particularly compared to early in the year. If anything, the conversation has tilted toward the importance for LSU or Ohio State of getting the No. 1 seed and avoiding Clemson.
The Tigers just haven’t played as tough of a schedule as other teams in the conversation and thus their margin for error in the Playoff discussion is smaller. That’s just the way it is, but Clemson seems to be handling it just fine.