Alabama and Clemson just finished yet another year of being head-and-shoulders better than every other team in college football, with Clemson being better than everyone.
Clemson and Alabama could both be better in 2019. Run and hide
The Tigers and Tide return so much, have reinforcements where they don’t, and face manageable schedules.
Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports
The gap between the Tide and Tigers and everybody else only got wider in 2018, per nationwide S&P+ figures. They were the two best teams by a margin comparable to USC and Texas’ domination in 2005, when Vince Young won the game of the century.
If you’re tired of these two teams dominating the sport, that’s understandable. But I’m telling you as a public service to brace for a fifth Playoff meeting in six years, just in case.
Both teams will return an embarrassment of riches.
Without much question, Tua Tagovailoa and title-game MVP Trevor Lawrence will be the top two preseason Heisman candidates. They’ll both command offenses that return key pieces all over.
Junior Tagovailoa will have a whole stable of blue-chip running backs minus senior Damien Harris and maybe junior Josh Jacobs, and all four of his top wide receivers. None of Biletnikoff Award winner Jerry Jeudy, Henry Ruggs III, DeVonta Smith, and Jaylen Waddle is yet eligible for the draft.
Clemson will have a sophomore Lawrence running the show. Like Bama, Clemson’s going to be preposterously loaded at the skill spots. Star running back Travis Etienne and receivers Justyn Ross, Tee Higgins, and Amari Rodgers are all still shy of draft eligibility. The main movement in Bama’s receiver corps will be slot receiver Hunter Renfrow getting replaced by some four-star (maybe rising sophomore Derion Kendrick), making the group even more athletically terrifying.
It’s wrong that Tagovailoa and Lawrence aren’t allowed to be in the NFL next season (and that Lawrence isn’t for another two years). Anyone who’s watched either of them realizes how much better they are now than a sizable group of QBs who will populate NFL rosters by the spring. But the NFL’s rules to keep down its costs are their college teams’ gain, and Lawrence and Tagovailoa should have huge years. It’s hard to see how much better Tua could get than he is now, but he’ll probably figure something out. And Lawrence will be a year wiser, with more lead time as the undisputed starting QB.
Where Bama and Clemson aren’t returning a lot, they’re set up fine. For both teams, that starts on the offensive line.
Bama will have to replace all but the right side of its starting offensive line. The left guard and center are seniors, and junior left tackle Jonah Williams is an obvious first-rounder. Those players will be losses, but Williams’ two backups right now are both former four-stars with two years of eligibility left, and three of the top eight OT recruits in the class of 2019 already signed with the Tide. Emil Ekiyor, a current freshman who can play guard or center and wowed a lot of recruiting analysts as a four-star a year ago, can start somewhere.
Clemson’s also looking at a potentially big NFL line exodus, with three juniors and two seniors starting this year. The Tigers haven’t loaded up on blue-chip linemen to the same extent Bama has, but it will help them that they’ve got the No. 2 OT recruit from the class of 2018, Jackson Carman, just waiting in the wings. They shocked a lot of people by getting Carman out of Ohio, and now they’ll get to see the dividends. They have two other ex-blue-chips currently serving as backups on the two-deep and should be more than fine.
Defensively, they’ll both replace tons of talent with tons of talent.
Assuming Bama defensive tackles Quinnen Williams and Raekwon Davis both turn pro, the Tide will be swapping out a whole line. They also have possible draft declarations throughout their linebacking and secondary groups. Again, whatever. Bama’s defense had three first-rounders and eight total picks in the 2018 draft, forcing Nick Saban to break in an entirely new secondary. The primary consequence was that Bama had mild big-play problems over the first few weeks of the season, which mostly got ironed out.
Clemson’s all-world defensive line will likely all be gone, and that’s the biggest loss either team faces that it can’t immediately offset. It’s probably not possible for coordinator Brent Venables to find four dudes who will be as dominant right away as Austin Bryant, Clelin Ferrell, Dexter Lawrence, and Christian Wilkins were this year. But it’ll help that former No. 1 defensive end recruit Xavier Thomas is here, and that Clemson’s strategy of playing damn near the whole roster has given four-star backups like DT Nyles Pinckney lots of run.
The secondary could return fully intact or barely at all, depending on draft decisions. (Sophomore corner A.J. Terrell, who had a pick-six against Bama, is the only starter who’s not eligible.) There are a few blue-chip backups waiting for chances there, too, though, and the No. 2 corner in 2019, Andrew Booth, is en route. It’s reasonable to expect some decline from a No. 1 S&P+ ranking, but not much. And with Lawrence’s growth, the offense could easily jump up from its No. 5 spot.
Even their schedules look friendly.
The Tide’s hardest-looking road game is against Texas A&M or Auburn, teams they beat easily this year. LSU’s at home, after they beat the Tigers easily in Baton Rouge. It’s not like they’re looking at, say, a road game against Georgia.
The Tigers’ hardest-looking road game is against ... South Carolina? Syracuse? Their last trip to the Carrier Dome went poorly, but they don’t have Notre Dame (which they just destroyed) on their schedule again until 2020, and they get A&M at home this year, not in College Station.
You’d think someone will lose at some point, but there are no easy picks to make it happen.
And all of that’s without saying two obvious things: 1) Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney have proved they don’t have down years, and 2) both teams have extremely deep recruiting classes on the way.
Bama’s back at the No. 1 class, a year after its seven-year streak of top classes ended. This could even be Saban’s best class yet. Clemson’s No. 6 with 27 signees, a much bigger class than Swinney had recently taken, because the Tigers have avoided much attrition by picking great talent and then giving lots of guys meaningful reps.
It’s hard to get better when you’re already the best. But these two both have enough key parts already in place, and enough help coming, that it’s well within the realm of possibility.
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