How Clemson outcoached and outplayed Bama - SB Nation

Clemson evened its current series with Alabama to 2-2, with each team also owning two Playoff championships. The Tigers also evened out the number of blowout wins, whipping the Tide 44-16 after going down 24-6 a year ago.

In the process, they introduced Alabama to freshman phenom Trevor Lawrence and the next stage of tactics, leaving Nick Saban looking lost and desperate.

Modern football is still taking shape, following a somewhat predictable sequence from one innovation to the next, all stemming from the mainstreaming of the spread offense. Clemson has long helped to set the curve, in part because it has a good staff under Dabo Swinney and in part because it had a huge monster to slay in Saban’s Alabama, demanding innovation.

In 2018’s title game, they slew that monster pretty easily on both sides of the ball, making conventional wisdom look dated. They barely edged Alabama in total yardage and finished just behind in rushing. Their rushing margin was only achieved after a final, field-length drive against a worn down, despondent defense that was happy to surrender the third downs that would drain clock and end the humiliation. Before that, the Tide held a massive edge in rushing — but not in scoring.

Here’s how Clemson took the lead in that game and, for the immediate moment, as a program.

Alabama only adopted the pass. Clemson was born in it, molded by it.

With Tua Tagovailoa, the Tide went full bore into the RPO spread game, attaching slants and screens to many of their runs and forcing teams to worry about covering burners like Jerry Jeudy at the same time as the run game. SEC defenses were at a loss, struggling to figure out whether to emphasize the run or the pass and falling into a “heads you win, tails I lose” trap.

When opponents mixed in nickel defenses and man coverage, Alabama would occasionally fling the ball down the field, but just as often, they’d bring in a second TE to pound the ball. Oklahoma didn’t have answers for that, giving up big points early to RPO passes and getting ground down late from those 12-personnel runs.

But Oklahoma didn’t have much of a defense anyway. Clemson already had a system to handle the stresses of an RPO spread offense.

Clemson’s offense has been ostensibly a spread-to-run unit, but against Notre Dame and Alabama, it was all in on spread passing. The Tigers opened the title game in four-WR sets with ageless former walk-on Hunter Renfrow moving around from one side of the formation to the other, stressing Alabama’s structures and offering coverage tells to Lawrence. The young QB found and punished matchup advantages and mistakes throughout, finishing with 10.8 yards per each of his 32 throws and no INTs.

Until that final, 14-play, clock-killing drive, the Tigers had thrown 31 times and only ran 18. In Clemson’s previous victory over Alabama, when Deshaun Watson threw like wild, the Tigers still had 42 carries.

It’s still a relatively new thing in football history for a spread passing team to be able to dominate without leaning on the run, but it’s not going to be a temporary phase. Similar to NBA shooters, quarterbacks are becoming more efficient over time, and passing is quite often simply a better choice than running.

Clemson moved the primary battle ground to the perimeter.

Saban seems to have adopted the RPO spread offense to allow his team to score when necessary and to complement his rushing attack. When push came to shove against Clemson, Saban’s preference was clearly still to try and control the game with the run. By doing so, he brought a knife to a gun fight.

By playing in 10 personnel (one RB, zero TEs, four WRs), the Tigers embraced an up-tempo pace immediately. They welcomed Alabama to outnumber and overpower their rushing attack and force the pass, or else to get into dime and try to match Clemson’s WRs on the perimeter.

Alabama was smart enough to opt for the latter, but it wasn’t enough. Even with six DBs on the field, they couldn’t throw Lawrence off his game with disguises, nor match up against Justyn Ross and the Tiger skill personnel.

Clemson’s OL protected magnificently all night, and their emphasis on the pass gave them more firepower, helping to avoid the problems Alabama’s own offense had when trying to pound the ball against a powerful front.

Watching Clemson’s title game victories over Alabama are like watching one of the Super Bowl victories by the Tom Brady Patriots. On the biggest stage, Clemson is rewriting the rules for what you can do with a spread passing attack — if you have a QB anywhere near as good as Lawrence, especially.

A key to modern defense: preventing clear pre-snap reads that allow QBs to throw to spots or lock in on one-on-one matchups.

When Lawrence knew he had Ross in single coverage, he was taking it. There was often very little Alabama could do about it.

While also only a freshman, Ross is 6’4 with great athleticism and ball skills. He usually can’t be handled by just one guy, especially with a QB of Lawrence’s caliber throwing to a key spot. This is like the Steph Curry three-point shot off the dribble or James Harden’s step back three — the level of skill means it’s no longer a winning play for the defense to concede a previously difficult look.

Clemson’s defense came in with a different plan. It was clearly a higher priority for them to confuse Tagovailoa’s reads than to get numbers into the box to stop running backs from chugging along. The two INTs that Clemson forced were both a result of Tagovailoa failing to get a clean pre-snap read, particularly the pick-six that opened the contest:

This is a simple, base defense for Clemson. The only catch is that they switch up who plays where, and they did so with perfect timing, moving into new positions with Alabama’s snap. They brought sam linebacker Isaiah Simmons off the edge while dropping the DE to the opposite edge, then replaced Simmons with strong safety K’Von Wallace and sliding free safety Tanner Muse over to play the deep half zone.

Tagovailoa thought he was seeing a single-high coverage and threw an out against a cover 2 CB, who was free to break on the ball because he had a safety right behind him.

Tua’s later INT would come when he thought he was getting cover 2 and threw a deep out against cover 3 with the CB dropping deep.

Playing great situational defense, like when you’re backed up to the end zone or facing a passing down, is much more important than total yardage.

Clemson succeeded here as well. They were aided by Alabama’s insistence on being run-centric and trying to win in the trenches. The Tide tried to hammer the football in on the goal line with big packages. The Tigers knew it was coming and had the strength and knowledge to stop it up. Alabama turned the ball over on downs three times.

Things got desperate, with Saban running a hilariously bad fake FG in which the kicker was asked to serve as a downhill blocker for holder and third-string QB Mac Jones. I think that was the moment when Alabama fans knew it was over.

Later they tried to punch in a fourth and goal from the 2-yard line with a QB stretch play for Tagovailoa ... in which they neglected to block Clelin Ferrell.

Clemson taught Alabama and college football a valuable lesson.

It’s not exactly about complex tactics or imposing your will in the run game (save for key situations). It’s about throwing the ball to matchup weapons, particularly on the perimeter, and winning the matchup battle before the snap with tempo, movement, and hybrid players. The Patriots established that as the best practice in the NFL with their Super Bowl win over the Seattle Seahawks’ Legion of Boom, and Clemson has done so in the college game as well.

And this Lawrence fellow is going to be around for at least two more years, so everyone else better catch up quick.

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