College football: How Clemson Can Beat Alabama (Praying Is Optional)

TAMPA, Fla. — If a football team averaged barely one touchdown per game, you would call it a pretty bad team.

But what if that was just by its defense and punt returners? You would call it a championship contender — or the 2016 Alabama Crimson Tide.

Alabama’s defense and special teams have been light-years beyond anyone else’s, conceding only one more touchdown to opposing offenses than they have scored themselves. In 14 games this season, the Tide have 15 touchdowns from interception returns, fumble returns and punt returns — in other words, on 15 occasions, Alabama has scored a touchdown when its offense was not on the field.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, whose Tigers face Alabama (14-0) on Monday night in the College Football Playoff championship game. “They’ve got 15. They’ve created a word, they’ve done it so much — NOTs.” He used an acronym for nonoffensive touchdowns.

There have been six touchdowns on interceptions, five on fumbles and four on punts. Da’Ron Payne returned a fumble for a score against Mississippi, which was among the teams that ceded the fewest fumbles this season in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Eddie Jackson, who later sustained a season-ending injury, returned a punt 79 yards against Tennessee — the only punt-return touchdown the Volunteers allowed this season. Ryan Anderson intercepted Washington’s Jake Browning on Dec. 31 for that star quarterback’s only pick returned for a score this season.

So it was no wonder that when Swinney was asked on Saturday how to beat Alabama — he has come as close as anybody recently, falling in last year’s title game, 45-40, thanks in part to a 95-yard kickoff return by Alabama — that he knew the first order of business: “You can’t let them score on defense or special teams.”

The question of how to beat Alabama is the default one as Monday night approaches, simply because the Tide, who are going for their fifth title in eight seasons, have lost just one game in the past two seasons. Victory would give them a 27-game winning streak, the 10th-longest since World War II, with no obvious end in sight.

But there just may be a playbook.

“Clemson might be the only team in college football that can beat Alabama,” said CBS college football commentator Gary Danielson.

(“I don’t think they will,” he added.)

A Clemson win would almost certainly begin with a positive turnover margin. In Alabama’s one loss this season or last, a fluky 43-37 defeat by Ole Miss in September 2015, the Rebels benefited from five turnovers and gave up none of their own. And there would be no nonoffensive touchdowns — no NOTs.

“You cannot allow that to happen,” said Purdue’s new coach Jeff Brohm, whose Western Kentucky team lost to Alabama this season, 38-10, giving up a 55-yard touchdown off an interception. “When it does, you’re behind the eight ball.”

Second, Clemson (13-1), probably the only team that resembles Alabama in both talent and depth on its offensive and defensive lines, needs to win at the line of scrimmage — or, failing that, play Alabama to a draw.

“We need to play well up front, and we need to limit the explosive plays,” said Brent Venables, Clemson’s defensive coordinator.

The alternative, Clemson quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter suggested, is to treat Alabama as the Germans did France’s imposing Maginot Line during World War II — by going around it. They could try to get the ball to the perimeter, or at least make it look as if that is where the ball is going, rather than try to break through a front seven that has held opposing teams to 62 rushing yards per game — more than 35 fewer than the second-best team in the FBS.

“Misdirection,” Streeter said. “Sometimes it looks like we’re going east and west, but maybe those are just motions or speed motions that make it look like it, and then we’re getting up the middle.”

Clemson’s offensive backfield is usually a hive of activity before the snap, with motions and shifts that may or may not lead to handoffs, swing passes or designed runs for quarterback Deshaun Watson, the dangerously mobile two-time Heisman Trophy finalist.

“Our offensive line has done a great job this year of handling our base plays,” Streeter added. “What we can do to help them is make it look a little different, so it’s not just, ‘Here’s the formation,’ and they can line up to it and attack it the way they’ve seen it on film.”

Clemson’s offense is dynamic. Several of its skill players seem bound for the NFL, and Watson, gifted though he is as a runner, is actually a greater threat throwing the ball. And so Brohm, who played quarterback for six NFL teams, had two words of advice for the Tigers: Go deep.

Even though the Crimson Tide excel most at defending the run, they usually line up to defend the pass with two safeties and cornerbacks who slow receivers getting off the line. Shorter completions, Brohm suggested, might be more trouble than they are worth.

“We tried to throw it over their heads,” Brohm said. “We didn’t hit one.”

Danielson concurred.

“They’re going to challenge you to throw the ball,” he said.

That could be a winning strategy, he added, noting the physical similarity between Clemson’s star wide receiver, Mike Williams, who missed last year’s title game with an injury, and Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant.

“Mike Williams has one of those Dez Bryant-type bodies that, in one-on-one coverages, is good for throwing the ball,” Danielson said.

Against Alabama’s offense, Clemson will hope to get to Jalen Hurts, the Tide’s true freshman quarterback who completed just seven passes for 57 yards in the semifinal against Washington.

Clemson’s coaches and players shied away on Saturday from anything more than euphemistic acknowledgments of Hurts’ limitations — “The surrounding, supporting cast really helped Jalen Hurts have the kind of year that he has,” Venables said — perhaps fearful of doling out bulletin-board material. However, working in-game for the first time with the new Crimson Tide offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, Hurts is the clear weak link in an offense otherwise filled with stars.

Alabama’s game plans “protected the quarterback,” Danielson said, “not making him make throwing decisions.”

So, Clemson’s recipe: Commit no turnovers (even as Watson’s 17 interceptions stick out like a bad bruise); overwhelm the defense (which gave up 11.2 points per game); throw the deep ball (past defensive backs who are likely to end up in the NFL); and frustrate a composed young quarterback (who actually threw fewer interceptions per attempt this season than Watson).

And Swinney had one more idea for how to accomplish the task in front of him: “We’ve got to find a way to get a couple of them NOTs.”

© 2017 The New York Times Company