Here’s why Ohio State vs. Clemson is gonna be such a great Fiesta Bowl

The two 2016 College Football Playoff semifinals feature two completely different narratives.

The Peach Bowl is easy enough to understand. It is your typical favorite-versus-underdog script, with Washington, a two-touchdown underdog, likely needing a couple of breaks to have a chance (and, in theory, being good enough to generate those breaks). It’s easier to break down a game like that.

The Fiesta Bowl between Ohio State and Clemson (Dec. 31, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN), on the other hand, is almost impossibly even on paper. S&P+ says the Buckeyes have about a 60/40 chance of reaching the CFP final, but the statistical advantages are evenly spread.

It would make sense that this is an even matchup because the Buckeyes and Tigers have basically been the same team this year. Each spent half the season as an unsinkable killing machine, and each spent the other half slogging through close games. Both teams have high-end A-games, and both are good enough to escape with wins in their C-games.

Both recruit at top-10 levels. Both have two losses over the last two years. And the one time they faced each other under current leadership (Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Ohio State’s Urban Meyer), the 2014 Orange Bowl featured four lead changes in the final 31 minutes and was decided by five points and two late turnovers.

But if the teams play to the same level of their capabilities, we are left to read the tiniest of tea leaves and break down the tiniest of advantages.

Instead of even pretending like there are major advantages here, let’s acknowledge the uncertainty surrounding what should be a fascinating game. Let’s also list out the minor advantages that might actually exist.

Since this will likely be very close, I dove into the stats from each team’s close finishes. Both have had quite a few. Ohio State beat Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, and Wisconsin by no more than one possession and lost to Penn State via fourth-quarter blocked field goal. Clemson won six one-possession games (Auburn, Troy, Louisville, NC State, Florida State, Virginia Tech) and lost via last-second field goal to Pitt.

Here are the primary conclusions I can reach from just those 12 games.

Tight Ohio State and Clemson games played out in pretty similar ways. These Ohio State games featured about 26 combined possessions and 150 plays on average, and these Clemson games featured 28 possessions and about 165 snaps. That’s a difference of about two snaps per team per quarter — not much.

Clemson created about 7.4 scoring opportunities (first downs inside the opponent’s 40) per game in these tight contests but allowed 6.9 to opponents. Ohio State created 6.2 and allowed only 4.8.

Advantage: Ohio State!

Of course, Clemson averaged 4.6 points per scoring chance and allowed 4.1; Ohio State struggled to finish, allowing 4.3 points per opp but managing just 3.7 itself. The Buckeyes gave away more chances to win games, and it nearly cost them dearly.

Football can be broken down into two questions: how frequently successful are you? And when you are successful, how successful are you?

The stat IsoPPP is designed to measure the latter. It looks at the magnitude of a team’s successful plays. In this game, it tells us neither run game is adept at huge gashes on the ground.

Ohio State ranks 72nd in Rushing IsoPPP; Clemson ranks a ghastly 126th.

Ohio State has 98 rushes of 10-plus yards (12th in FBS) but only 10 of 30-plus (49th).

Clemson: 66 gains of 10-plus (74th), four of 30-plus (109th).

Any advantage should go to Ohio State. The Buckeyes’ offense is more likely to generate them, their defense more likely to stop them. But it’s hard to imagine either team developing a significant edge here.

And if you aren’t generating big plays, you’re forced to stay on schedule and work methodically down the field. And that could tip the scales in Clemson’s favor, because ...

Ohio State’s success rate on passing downs (second-and-long, third-and-medium/long, fourth down) is just 30 percent, 74th in the country. The Buckeyes allow sacks on 8.5 percent of passing-downs pass attempts, 77th. They are among the nation’s most efficient offenses on standard downs, but when they fall behind schedule, they struggle to catch up.

Clemson’s defense, by the way: second in passing-downs success rate allowed (21 percent) and seventh in passing-downs sack rate (13.3 percent). In fact, most of Clemson’s biggest advantages deal with the pass rush. On third-and-4 or more, the Tigers are allowing a completion rate of 41 percent and a passer rating of 75.1.

There’s a strange balance in this matchup. Ohio State is more likely to avoid passing downs, while Clemson is more likely to dig out of them. In theory, you’d prefer the former, but it won’t take many negative plays for Clemson to turn the tables.

Win expectancy is a measure I created to look at how likely a given outcome was. It looks at the stats from a specific game and asserts that, given these stats, Team A should have expected to win this game X percent of the time.

In Ohio State’s five close contests, the Buckeyes’ average win expectancy was just 41 percent. They were lucky to finish 4-1. Clemson had an average win expectancy of 78 percent in its seven close games.

What made such a positive difference for the Buckeyes and a negative difference for the Tigers? For starters, Urban Meyer almost always overachieves his win expectancy.

Beyond that, turnovers luck definitely bailed out Meyer’s Buckeyes. Ohio State was plus-6.2 points per game in turnovers luck in these close games, while Clemson’s average was minus-2.9 points per game in the same sample.

The teams’ average expected turnover margin was right at 0. Actual margin: plus-5 for Ohio State in five games, minus-5 for Clemson in seven.

You think the bounces might make a difference here?

Because of the tightness of the matchup, I’ve gone back and forth myself. But if Clemson wins, it’s likely that the Tigers did so because of passing-downs success and better red zone execution. For Ohio State, the winning margin would likely come from a stellar run game and a turnover or two.