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Swinney confident star DE Lawson will play vs Alabama

Following weeks of anticipation and hype, the College Football Playoff national championship game has been set, with No. 1 Clemson slated to square off against No. 2 Alabama on January 11 in Glendale, Arizona. Top-ranked Clemson is sixth. “We had such great depth, experienced depth, and that’s what I see with Alabama, a bunch of guys, bunch of seniors and juniors and all those guys are starter type of bodies – big, strong, physical guys, and obviously well-coached”. Brown was at No. 2 on Alabama’s depth chart at both cornerback and safety heading into the Cotton Bowl against Michigan State.

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ACC Defensive Player Of The Year Shaq Lawson will be on the field when the Clemson Tigers return to practice Monday evening, head coach Dabo Swinney said in a Monday afternoon conference call.

In Clemson’s 37-17 Orange Bowl win against Oklahoma, Watson did not have his best day passing, but did rush for a career-high 145 yards.

“We’ll get him back out there today”, Swinney said.

Forced to play more snaps in a game than he had all season, the 6-foot-4, 265-pounder from Pavo, Georgia, contributed four tackles, including half a sack.

“I would say the one thing that was advantageous to us was we weren’t anxious about getting a new syllabus or shaking a professors hand and trying to figure things out for a semester”, Perry said. LSU is an obvious outlier here because Alabama destroyed them in the rematch that year in the BCS title game. He said it’s on the players to focus on what they can improve before next game.

But the Crimson Tide won’t roll into class until January 13, two days after the title game. “Clearly, Clemson is a team that is good in all facets of the game”.

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With all the different plays and formations coaches will want to add, the practice disparity gives a huge advantage to Alabama who’s already favored by a touchdown, according to ESPN. Austin has played, not as much as Shaq, but the cumulative effect of his experience and practice and just being able to bring him along at a healthy pace has been very beneficial for us.

Andy Teasdall and Dabo Swinney celebrate after a perfectly executed fake punt pass