See photos of Clemson’s warm up before the game.
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“I’ve never been prouder of a group of young guys”. Again, Watson came out of Monday night a national star, but Coker quietly played the game of his life. They saw the heart of our team. They competed. We out-gained them. “I thought we should have won”.
Alabama put the first points of the night on the board.
Watson, who finished third behind Alabama’s Derrick Henry and Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey in the Heisman Trophy voting, had carried the Tigers all season.
The Crimson Tide needed all its power and speed.
Watson threw two first-half touchdown strikes to Hunter Renfrowe, but it was his balletic escapes from pressure that set the tone.
He leaned down, looked at the camera and said, “Man, I said, ‘Yo, that boy fast.’ I said, ‘Man, that boy fast.’ I’m talking about, that man fast”. We had 550 yards of offense.
Early in the second quarter, however, Alabama regained momentum thanks to Eddie Jackson.
“I hit it on Saturday”, Griffith said. “But we gave it all we had and my boys up front, we did what we had to do”. Although the Tigers ended up falling short, without Gallman’s effort in the second half, ‘Bama would have won by double digits. But Coker bounced back from a shaky first half that included four sacks and burned Clemson’s aggressive defense with long throws. “I’m really proud of that man. He really introduced himself to the world”. With his team down 24-17 and facing fourth down in OT, Craig Krenzel’s pass into the end zone was called incomplete by one official, but another ruled interference against Miami.
Watson led Clemson to a field goal to make it 31-27, and boom!
As ESPN’s Bomani Jones pointed out, the play crucially denied the Tigers a possession in the final quarter. Clemson’s onside kick went out of bounds.
“There’s no doubt that we will be back”, Swinney said. “A lot of people didn’t think we were going to be in this game”. Marlon Humphrey recovered and two plays later Coker hit tight end O.J. Howard for a 51-yard touchdown. Clemson convert the touchdown and the National Championship ends 12 seconds later 45-40. He’s got a higher career win percentage than Saban (.851 percent vs. 765 percent) but only three national titles – two fewer than Saban.
Alabama’s offensive coordinator got left behind after the game. “All the stats don’t really matter to me. He’s improved his blocking”. In total, Howard caught five passes for 208 yards, including those two touchdowns.
Huegel would add another field goal for Clemson, but the Crimson Tide immediately responded with points of their own from Kenyan Drake.
Clemson would not go away, however. Clemson didn’t fold. Watson’s 11-yard TD pass to Artavis Scott cut the Tide lead to 38-33 with 4:40 to play. The -6.5 denotes the fact that the Tide must win by seven points or more for people who bet on Alabama to cash their winning ticket. Writing for Sports on Earth, Will Leitch said that while it’s Alabama’s opponents who usually are willing to try unconventional tactics to topple the mighty Crimson Tide, this time it was Saban who “pulled a huge David-thwarting-Goliath move with his most stunning, batsh!t-crazy, evil-genius call in recent memory”.
“We’ll learn from this”, Swinney said.
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Watson’s play, though, could not make up for Clemson’s mistakes on defense and special teams against Alabama.
