Coker played the best game of his career, going 25-of-30 for 286 yards and two touchdowns. It’s why, despite all of the feel-good stories you’re going to be seeing and reading in the next week about Clemson’s rise to prominence, quarterback Deshaun Watson’s brilliance and coach Dabo Swinney’s return to face the Alabama mothership, that I just can’t see Alabama losing the national championship game. The final is a game we actually really want to see…
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He had just watched his offense take apart one of the best defenses in the country in a 38-0 thrashing of Michigan State in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, but it wasn’t the way anybody necessarily expected the Crimson Tide to roll on offense.
Jonathan Allen and the ferocious Tide defensive front sacked Connor Cook four times and allowed the Spartans (12-2) only one trip into the red zone – which ended with Cyrus Jones intercepting a pass at the goal line.
The beating the Crimson Tide laid on the one-dimensional Spartans overshadowed how Clemson controlled the line of scrimmage on offense and defense against an Oklahoma team that came into the Orange Bowl riding a seven- game winning streak in which it averaged 52 points and 593 yards. The last made it 38-0 halfway through the fourth quarter.
Alabama finally broke through by going not to Henry but to Ridley, who has stepped into Amari Cooper’s role this season and played a lot like the former All-American.
Coker, who has completed 67.1 percent of his passes this season, conceded that he might have put too much pressure on himself last season after transferring in from Florida State. No doubt, that will add fuel for a Tigers team that has been battling an inferiority complex at a school where big-game losses are described as “Clemsoning”.
Connor Cook, Michigan State quarterback: “It’s just been so fun”. Wayne Gallman rushed for 150 yards and two touchdowns in 26 attempts. The Crimson Tide entered the game as the No. 1 rushing defense in the nation and lived up to that as backup quarterback Damion Terry was the leading rusher with 14 yards on one carry. The over/under total for the game has been set at 53.5 points.
That threat, Saban said, “tells me they’ve got a really good team and a really good program”.
Before Saturday, Alabama failed to score 60 points in regulation in three of the Crimson Tide’s last five contest and only topped 70 points once over that same stretch.
Alabama will play Clemson in the national championship game on January 11th. Last year, it was Alabama falling to Ohio State after having an early lead. And there was no circumstance in that game out there today that changed anybody’s feeling about how they wanted to compete and how they wanted to play.
“We’ve got to value the ball more”, Johnson said.
“The inability to run the football consistently obviously hurt us”, said MSU head coach Mark Dantonio. And, if you get a penalty, it kind of throws you off course.
Both teams deserve to be here and they match up so well on both sides of the ball.
“Just got to keep the focus we had in preparation for this game”, Coker said.
Once they realized they could exploit Michigan State’s defensive backs, Coker began making plays.
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McDowell said it’s possible the Spartans “might have been a little star struck” against Alabama, but he was more impressed by Jake Coker than Heisman Trophy victor Derrick Henry.
