Among all the magnificent performances in Alabama’s 45-40 win over Clemson in the College Football Playoff Championship, O.J. Howard’s game stands out the most.
Bama’s O.J. Howard went from looking like a 5-star bust to being a Championship hero, in one night
One of the highest-touted tight end recruits ever finally put some numbers on the board.
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The Alabama tight end exploded for 208 yards and two touchdowns on only five receptions, averaging more than 41 yards per reception on the biggest stage of his life and being named Offensive Player of the Game.
That leads to a question: where has this been for the past three years?
Howard was a massively hyped recruit coming out of Autauga Academy in Prattville (Alabama). He was a five-star recruit, a rare status for tight ends, and a top-20 overall recruit in the 2013 recruiting class. At 6’5, 221 pounds, he was expected to step in and immediately become a dangerous weapon.
As a true freshman in 2013, he only caught 14 passes for 269 yards and two touchdowns. The next touchdown he would score would be on Monday night in Phoenix.
Howard went through the 2014 and 2015 regular seasons without cashing in before going supernova against Clemson and helping clinch a national championship. That’s 28 straight games without a touchdown, nearly inexplicable for a player so obviously talented. Though he had sneaked his way to 394 receiving yards this year before the championship, he caught all of four passes for the entire month of November.
On OJ Howard, Kiffin joked: "We'd been resting him for 14 games. He had fresh legs."
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) January 12, 2016 O.J. Howard: "You can’t get frustrated when you’re not getting the ball." Said this game makes him think about making plays for Tide in ’16.
— Saturday Down South (@SDS) January 12, 2016 The tight end has never been a particularly huge part of the Alabama passing game. In fact, Howard’s 33 receptions in 2015 were the most of any Alabama tight end during the Nick Saban era in Tuscaloosa. But Howard might have been the most-hyped tight end recruit ever, and it wasn’t until the final game of his junior year that he truly showed his gigantic talent. Without Howard, Alabama might not beat Clemson, so I’m sure Tide fans will certainly say, “Better late than never.”
“O.J., quite honestly, should have been more involved all year long,” Saban said. “Sometimes he was open and we didn’t get him the ball. But I think the last two games have been breakout games for him in terms of what he’s capable of and what he can do. I would say it’s bad coaching on my part that he didn’t have the opportunity to do that all year long.”
And while Howard boosted his numbers by running free against a confused Clemson secondary a time or two, the fact that he was even running routes was a positive sign. Howard's most noteworthy contributions had been his blocking until Monday night:
“We need our tight ends to be able to block,” said Alabama head coach Nick Saban. “I think, you know, people say we want to run the ball, we want to run the ball and we want to be a defensive team. Well, that’s hard to do when you don’t have a tight end that can block effectively. I think O.J. has improved in that area.”
There aren’t many players with the same package of size, speed and versatility that Howard brings to the table, and now that we’ve seen him show it on a huge stage like the Playoff title game, it would be nice to see this kind of thing more often over the course of a full year. Maybe 2016 will be the year.
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