Join The Roar for live coverage of the College Football National Championship on Tuesday afternoon from 12:30pm AEDT.
After another exciting regular season, and two lopsided semi-final contests over New Year’s, the best two teams in America will play off for the second National Championship to be awarded under the new College Football Playoff system.
The Crimson Tide of Alabama face the Clemson Tigers on neutral ground in Phoenix, Arizona in what promises to be an epic sixty minutes of football. The final turn in the road to the National Championship Game was easier than expected for both teams: Clemson beat Oklahoma 37-7 in the Orange Bowl in Miami and, a few hours later, Alabama put on a master class in shutting out a very good Michigan State team, 38-0 at the Cotton Bowl Classic in Dallas.
Perhaps because of the ease of their victory against the Big Ten champions, who’re renowned for their defense, the Tide will go in as warm favourites in most quarters, despite the fact that Clemson are the top-ranked team in the country, and have been for the majority of the season. This mirrors the lead-up to the Orange Bowl for Clemson, when Oklahoma was generating all the buzz and being talked about as favourites. So, if nothing else, Clemson are at least used to it.
In fact, Tigers coach Dabo Swinney claims that no one outside of his locker room believes that the team is capable of winning. That’s slightly factually incorrect, but if it helps his football team gel by way of an ‘us against the rest of the world’ scenario – and apparently it does – then Swinney is going to keep telling his players that the rest of the country disrespects them.
Despite what Swinney might want to say, there are plenty of believers in the 2015 iteration of the Clemson Tigers, because they’re a very good football team. Their offense, led by dual-threat superstar DeShaun Watson isn’t easy stopped – ask Clemson, and every other team the Tigers have faced this year, during their unbeaten run to the big game – and their defense is able to play at a similar level to Watson and the offense. They’re also solid in the special teams arena, so arguably as well-rounded a football team as Alabama has faced in years.
The Tigers, especially on offense, will pose an immense challenge to Alabama. They’ll need to be good, because the Tide, according to pretty much every major statistical marker, boasts the best defense in America, led by immense linebacker Reggie Ragland. I love the defensive line, too. Defensive end A’Shawn Robinson is a gun. As is nose tackle Jonathan Allan. Even the secondary, guilty of being the weak link in recent years, has been better this year than just about any other time in the Saban era, led by cornerback Cyrus Jones, who is also a handy punt returner – as he showed in the Cotton Bowl romp.
The key here is Watson. Can he make enough explosive plays to win the game? Let’s not forget that the Tide have struggled under Nick Saban against mobile, duel-threat quarterbacks – it’s their kryptonite, if you will. Watson is the very definition of a guy who can make big plays with his arm and legs, and he does so with regularity
It’s a rare thing, seeing the Tide lose under Saban, but they’ve been defeated by the likes of Johnny Manziel (Texas A&M) Nick Marshall (Auburn) and, this year, Chad Kelly of Ole Miss, two players who’re able to string out the ‘Bama defense. Manziel, especially, gave Saban’s defense fits on both occasions that he faced them, and there are plenty of similarities that can be drawn between Johnny Football and Watson.
The Alabama defense will have their work cut out for them against Watson and the impressive running back Wayne Gallman – he was a revelation in the Orange Bowl, but figures to find it tougher against that very good Alabama defensive line – plus the cadre of wide receivers, led by the revelatory Artavis Scott, and one of my favourites, their pass-catching tight end Jordan Leggett who, although quiet in the win over Oklahoma, is as good a player as there is at his position anywhere in the country.
If you saw the Tide in their dominating Cotton Bowl Victory, you would have recognised that Heisman Trophy-winning running back Derrick Henry played just a small role in the outcome of the game. Why? Because quarterback Jake Coker had his coming out party, shredding that good Spartan defense, and completing all but five passes. Michigan State lined up to stop the run, and did so fairly effectively, but they hadn’t counted on Coker having the game of his life. He consistently hit receiver Calvin Ridley with deep shots, and seemed to be a different quarterback to the one we’ve seen in any one of his other starts.
The emergence of Coker, who has nine touchdown passes in his last ten games, makes Alabama an even more dangerous team. In the past, teams have loaded up to slow down Henry (with limited success, it must be said) content to let Coker beat them with his arm if possible. Now, it’s a serious threat. Clemson are going to have to play incredibly disciplined and mistake-free football. The Tigers are as well-equipped as any defense in the nation to slow Alabama down, but whether they can do so enough to snatch a win is the big question.
Prediction: I really like Clemson, but, man it’s hard to go past Nick Saban and his team at the business end of the season, and the Tide have an ominous history of championship game domination. Ask Notre Dame and LSU. I’ve got the Tide by about a touchdown, in what should be a brilliant game.
Join The Roar for live coverage of the College Football National Championship on Tuesday afternoon from 12:30pm AEDT.
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