Deshaun Watson, the Clemson quarterback, kept his team even before Alabama went bonkers with a 24-point fourth quarter.
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Improving upon the awful numbers from the semifinals on New Year’s Eve yet still falling short of last year, Alabama’s 45-40 win over Clemson on Monday night saw a 15 percent decrease from the inaugural College Football Playoff championship, according to numbers released by ESPN on Tuesday.
Thank goodness Saban didn’t buy a Powerball ticket, leaving folks one more shot at their dream.
GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) No wonder the normally stone-faced Nick Saban was smiling.
The College Football Playoff National Championship Game between Alabama and Clemson featured two teams whose campuses are more than 1,500 miles from Utah, but a bevy of local connections played out on Twitter during the contest. And it paid off.
Alabama made the fourth quarter magical, at one time scoring 17 points in just over three minutes and a total of 24 points while the Tigers scored 16 points in the closing quarter. “I thought we should have won”. “It was a tie game. That’s quite a bit of sacrifice that gets made, and I think it’s challenging how do you get a team to maintain the focus that they need to have”.
TV cameras captured a kind of satisfied, I-got-you grin from Saban on the sideline that doesn’t often surface publicly.
Saban, who won a title at LSU in 2003, now has five titles. “And he certainly didn’t disappoint”, Saban said. “He’s always done that for me since I’ve been here at the university”.
Saban told him at the team hotel before the game they’d probably run the play. “But at the end of the day, I’ll sit down with coach tomorrow, like he said, and we’ll make the right decision”.
“I hit it on Saturday”, Griffith said. While it makes ACC fans gnash their teeth to hear this, the reality is Clemson’s run was validated because it stood toe to toe against the “big, bad” Tide and the “big, bad” SEC.
He did it again, when it counted. Although Clemson answered with a 31-yard field goal two minutes later, Alabama’s Kenyan Drake scored a 95-yard touchdown off of Clemson’s kick off return to put Alabama up 38-27, with seven minutes left in the game. It didn’t say “Roll Tide”.
Looking back, Alabama was the No. 1 seed in last season’s playoff and was up 21-6 on Ohio State in the first half before an audacious trick play got the Buckeyes back in the game. We dropped some balls, and just had some missed miscues.
Henry, the 2015 Heisman Trophy victor, gave the Tide a 7-0 lead when he broke out for a 50-yard TD that provided a ideal example of his blend of power and speed – stiff-arming a Tigers defender and then running away from the defense to the end zone. Clemson was the same as everyone else to Alabama.
With the score tied, Saban called for an onside kick.
Bryant has six national titles on his resume.
“I’m glad he’s on our team, glad he’ll be back next year”, Swinney said.
Center Ryan Kelly said he didn’t initially realize Alabama had tried the onside kick.
“But sometimes that’s not the best thing for them to do at that particular time”, he said. Or that all the money had afforded Alabama the greatest coach in the sport’s history.
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“Look, I felt pretty good about our chances of getting the onside kick because Griff kicks it well”, Saban said.
