not this year
Not sure my Tigers would have beaten Alabama even with Deshaun Watson this year. Alabama's defense was spot on and they were efficient on offense. Some bad officiating along the way hurt Clemson. Early on, a huge no call on an obvious interference. Very similar play for Alabama is called interference. Later, they horse collar our running back, no call. Couple plays later, they call a horse collar on us, similar grab. Little things in a big game - a few big plays here or there for Alabama and a very basic game was on. The tide still have more 5stars than everybody else. Will probably handle Georgia with ease. Biggest problem for Clemson was the fact that Alabama missed out on its conference championship game (very ironic), so they had more time to heal and prepare. To be frank, it's really a huge joke that the 1 seed should have to face Alabama first round, which didn't even earn its spot. Pretty obvious that Alabama gets a mulligan, year after year, and that will continue into the future. A devil like Nick Saban has contacts and he was able to negotiate and lobby his team into the playoff even after they were routed by Auburn and didn't even play for the SEC Championship. Say what you will about the fact that it's an 'all SEC' NC game, but this is contrived and never should have been a possibility.