We wrote a lot yesterday about the college football weekend that was, and where it leaves this season. Today, we’re going to talk a little about the bigger picture. Today, we’re going to talk about Clemson.
Clemson nearly beat Florida State on Saturday. They took Florida State to overtime, led by ten points for two separate stretches, and had a point-blank field goal attempt in the closing minutes which would have given them the lead. If Florida State is one of the best teams in the country, then Clemson played like one of the best teams in the country itself, stuffing the Seminoles on the ground and outgaining FSU by more than one hundred yards of offense. Clemson played very well. Clemson is also in a whole lot of trouble.
Within this season, this is evident. Teams that start 2–2 don’t make the playoff. It doesn’t happen. It has never happened, and there is no reason to believe Clemson will become the exception, partly because their loss to Duke came by so wide a margin and the committee cares about such things. Clemson is a program whose goals every year involve making the playoff. Clemson will not achieve that goal this season. But that is not what we’re here to talk about.
We’re worried about that bigger picture.
Beginning with Trevor Lawrence’s final year, Clemson has won the ACC twice in three tries. That’s about to be two in four. The two years Clemson did win the ACC, they followed up that championship by losing by three possessions in a bowl game. After the 2020 season, they were carved up by Justin Fields and the Ohio State Buckeyes, who were in turn carved up by DeVonta Smith and Alabama. After the 2022 season, they were beaten decisively by a Tennessee team starting its backup quarterback. Clemson’s two best teams in the last four years each lost badly to a team that was not of national championship quality. That implies Clemson was at least two big steps down from that standing itself.
If this happened to Ohio State, we would not be so concerned. If it happened to Alabama, we would remain on call. When it’s happened to USC and Notre Dame and Texas, it hasn’t stopped us from keeping an eye on them from afar. Even with Clemson’s ACC rival Florida State, it has not been surprising to see a recovery on the heels of half a decade in the desert. Clemson, however, isn’t like those schools. Clemson’s history is not as historic. Clemson’s resources are not as broad. Clemson’s brand is not as big. Clemson is a recent national power, but it is not a college football icon on the scale of Michigan, and it is not as rich and tied to Atlanta as Georgia is. The dynastic period between 2015 and 2019 closed a lot of gaps, but the difference between Clemson and all those other programs listed is that we have no doubt with the others that even with losses, the history and the resources and the brands will still be there. We don’t have that guarantee for the Tigers. We talked two offseasons ago about Nebraska being a dangerous example of what could happen to Oklahoma. With Clemson, the parallel is closer to Virginia Tech. As those programs are showing us, Nebraska’s floor is painful, and it’s still a lot higher than the Hokies’. What is there that makes Clemson special? There’s a five-year run of success that’s already close to four years in the rearview and one national title 42 years ago.
Clemson’s recruiting is falling off. After two years of top-five classes, they’ve receded to their previous station on the fringe of the top ten. Right now, their 2024 class ranks 16th nationally and only 9th in average recruit rating, signaling that they will not be making a dramatic late comeback to top the leaderboard. It’s not terrible recruiting, but it’s a step down from what they’ve enjoyed in recent seasons, and the product they’ve put on the field those recent seasons has not been a team playing at a national championship level. For a long time, Clemson achieved national title results without national title talent. After enough years of this, the talent finally came, but the results started to wane. Now, the recruiting is again following the results (this is a little unusual—often with these huge programs, recruiting is a leading indicator of wins rather than a lagging one), and what that means is that a team turning top-five talent into top-15 results is going to turn top-15 talent into…something. It’s hard to believe that something is going to be very good.
After the Duke loss, the common refrain throughout college football media was that Clemson lost because it refused to use the transfer portal to the degree other programs use it. That’s part of the issue, sure, Dabo Swinney has made his feelings about the transfer portal clear. But if Clemson were to go whole hog after transfers, how different would it look? The top ten teams right now in our college football model’s playoff probabilities are Penn State, Florida State, Ohio State, Georgia, Washington, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan, and Alabama. Why would a transfer choose Clemson over those ten schools?
This is why the Florida State loss, in particular, has the air of Clemson’s fatal last stand. Clemson’s recruiting, when it’s been strong, has always started with winning on the field. Recruits have wanted to join a winning program. Every year the program doesn’t win, more recruits are lost, and even the mere possibility of grabbing impact transfers lessens. With the Florida State loss in the books, this is not going to be a successful season. There is not going to be an ACC championship to sell to recruits. There are not going to be ten wins heading into bowl season. It’s possible, sure, you can tell yourself it’s possible. But it’s not going to happen, and even if it does, another blowout on the national scene most likely awaits. We offered the possibility above that Florida State might be among the best teams in the country, but it’s not looking like that possibility is true. Florida State is only ranked 9th in Movelor, and Movelor is higher on these guys than either of FPI and SP+. Florida State is getting better as a program, but they have ground to cover before they’re a threat to the big boys. Clemson couldn’t beat a team like that.
This would be fine if Clemson was getting as much out of its athletes as it was in those ascendant years. Clemson’s not getting those results anymore, though. Clemson is playing a little below its talent level, and that talent level is dropping, and this isn’t Florida where you can repeatedly try giving different guys the keys to a sports car. At Florida, you can cycle through coaches and eventually one will probably work. The donors who built Florida a two-billion-dollar endowment will help get the talent in the door, and a coach who can work with talent will work with that talent, and away Florida will go. At Clemson, the whole operation was dependent on the winning those five inexplicably strong years of talent development produced. If the winning is over—and it is, it is very hard to believe Clemson could rally and win the ACC at this point—it’s hard to see how the talent could reenter the equation. Worse still, it’s going to be very hard for Clemson to get rid of the greatest coach in school history if it decides a change is necessary. If Swinney isn’t the guy who’s going to figure it out, now would be the time to get out, while some hint of momentum is still there. But it would be insane to fire the man who’s won Clemson more conference championships than his seven full-time predecessors combined. Clemson is stuck with Swinney, and the ship is starting to leak.
Why Aren’t Other Teams Running the Super Sneak?
I prefer the name Super Sneak to Tush Push. Nothing against pushin’ tush, but I think Super Sneak is a better description of what’s happening. The Philadelphia Eagles looked at one of the oldest plays in football and bit it with a radioactive squat rack.
The Super Sneak is highly effective. Its effectiveness is also often overstated. If it was the cheat code some make it out to be, the Eagles would not have lost last year’s Super Bowl. There are ways to defeat every play in the NFL, and the especially unusual gimmicks usually become obsolete within two seasons or less. There was a period when I felt like the Packers would never be able to stop the Colin Kaepernick 49ers offense. The 49ers didn’t win a Super Bowl in that stretch, and after two straight years of eliminating the Packers, the offense stopped clicking and Kaepernick eventually was benched. The NFL is efficient. It figures things out fast. So for as fun as it is to imagine every team developing a quarterback who can squat 600 lbs. and the game evolving into a series of pushes up and down the field, that isn’t going to happen. Someone will figure out how to stop this play.
In the meantime, it’s a little puzzling why other teams don’t run it. I understand that other teams don’t have Jalen Hurts and that the Eagles have a very good offensive line, but surely, this is replicable? Is there really a tipping point at which it switches from impotent to the most consistently effective play in the sport? With no gradient in between?
A friend suggested that teams put a tight end under center to run this, addressing the problem of 600-lb.-squatting quarterbacks being a scarce resource. Maybe most teams also lack tight ends who can squat 600 lbs.? Maybe teams that do have those guys on their roster don’t have good enough offensive lines? If those explanations don’t hit it, it seems like it has to come back to one of two things: Either the play is dependent on a quarterback to run it, something stemming from timing or a necessity to keep the defense honest (though the point of the play is that everyone knows it’s coming), or this is one of those issues where head coaches are being too cautiously traditional, a constant inefficiency within the NFL.
I would like to see someone else at least give it a try. In the meantime, I think more players should try to squat 600 lbs. We should all try to squat 600 lbs. Let’s all try to squat 600 lbs. Build to it, though. If I go stand with 600 lbs. of weight on my shoulders right now I am going to shoot vertebrae out of my back as projectiles.
Jordan Love: The Guy, So Far
We had our first, “Wait, who?” moment of the Packers season on Sunday, or at least my first moment of that sort. I had missed Malik Heath’s previous two targets, I guess. It’s a thing that happens when a team’s two best offensive weapons—Aaron Jones and Christian Watson, in this case—are both out with injury, and it’s surprising it didn’t happen a week earlier.
I say all this to say that Jordan Love did not have his best weapons on Sunday, and with the exception of Jones, Jordan Love’s best weapons are still rather unproven themselves. Nevertheless, when the time came when there was no choice but to play for the win, Jordan Love commanded two touchdown drives in a six-minute stretch to take the lead from the Saints. It was a breakthrough moment, the first time we really had evidence to believe that Love will indeed be a serviceable heir to the Favre–Rodgers dynasty.
It shouldn’t be lost that there were great catches. There were some great, great catches. But the thing about great catches is that they often come when a pass is placed somewhere only the receiver can get it, and the thing about those two drives is that they were more efficient than they even needed to be. On most of the two series, Love and the Packers left more time on the clock and more downs on the marker than they needed, something which almost came back to bite them when Jameis Winston did a little Jordan Love impression of his own to set the Saints up for the missed kick. Love showed poise, Love made the throws, Love handled a high-pressure environment admirably, bouncing back after a rough fourth quarter in Atlanta. There’s no need to heap too much praise on the guy just yet—if he’s a top-fifteen quarterback this season, that will be incredible—but that was a great win, and not just because of what it does for the Packers in the standings.
What Happened to Oklahoma State?
Oklahoma State is really bad, you guys.
I didn’t get to watch, but Iowa State won its Big 12 opener on Saturday, and while they’re still unlikely to make a bowl, the Cyclones kept that goal feasible after the disaster against Ohio. It’s great to see that Jaylin Noel was healthy; it’s great to see Daniel Jackson put up numbers; it is all exciting and encouraging. The offense cannot run the ball, which bodes terribly for this Oklahoma matchup, but it does say a lot about this program that beating Oklahoma is a possibility frequently on the table. That is still pretty new.
Movelor has the Cyclones going an even 5.0–7.0, and while I don’t have projected win totals from SP+ and FPI, I can tell you that they’re only a little behind Movelor in where they have the Cyclones ranked, and they each—like Movelor—have this upcoming Oklahoma matchup as the Cyclones’ toughest remaining game. Rocco Becht is going to have to throw a lot, but if he can eat it as often as he has to and let Tyler Perkins do his thing, I’m excited to see how the defense matches up with Dillon Gabriel and the potent Sooners offense.
Going back to Oklahoma State for a minute, though: These guys won the Fiesta Bowl two years ago. They might now be the worst team in a Big 12 that just expanded to its largest size in history. I admittedly have not followed Mike Gundy’s work as closely as Dabo Swinney’s these last few years, but are people blaming the transfer portal with Gundy too? I don’t know Gundy’s feelings about transfers, but I have a guess as to where he stands.
Play-in Baseball
Six games left for the Cubs in this regular season, and since we last spoke about them they’re 3–0, so maybe we should shut up.
It is a ragtag situation right now. It is a situation where all hands are very much on deck. David Ross and the front office are working on a puzzle in which half of the pieces have been snapped in half, and it’s not looking the way it’s supposed to look, but it’s looking good enough in its own way to justify belief. Justin Steele should get two starts over these six games. Jameson Taillon will get one. Kyle Hendricks and Jordan Wicks will presumably get one apiece. In the sixth game, Marcus Stroman will likely piggyback again with Javier Assad. In the bullpen, it gets more chaotic, but that’s the starting pitching situation, and we’ve arrived there in a roundabout way but the final product, again, doesn’t look too bad.
Six games remain. The Cubs most likely need to win three of them to make the playoffs, based on our latest simulations (the FanGraphs probabilities lead our simulations to show a 5-in-6 chance the NL’s 7th-place team wins 84 games or fewer). For what it’s worth, FanGraphs labels tonight’s as the third-best opportunity of the six for the Cubs to get a win. Bryce Elder may be the best pitcher the Cubs face in Atlanta, but Steele remains the guy you want on the mound if you’re the Cubs.
