Clemson, Alabama and their championship fates are so intertwined these days, it is hard to look at one program without immediately thinking about the other.
In that way, the suddenly messy Clemson quarterback situation calls to mind what is happening in Tuscaloosa. Both Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban decided they would play two quarterbacks this season, but with one key difference.
Saban went with Tua Tagovailoa over veteran Jalen Hurts to open the season. Swinney stuck with veteran Kelly Bryant through four games, with freshman Trevor Lawrence getting regular time, before announcing Lawrence as his starter on Monday. For four weeks, the single greatest question floating around college football focused on whether Hurts would transfer from Alabama midseason.
Instead, it is Bryant who is choosing to leave, and that leaves the Tigers in a rather precarious situation. If they are going to make it back to the College Football Playoff and a fourth possible showdown against Alabama, they’ll have to do it with a true freshman quarterback and a depth chart that offers zero experienced backups.
Of course, it is easy to believe Clemson got to this point because, well, because of Alabama. Though Swinney dismissed the notion that the Tigers decided to go with Lawrence over Bryant to improve their chances of winning a national title (aka to beat Alabama), it is hard to avoid believing that is exactly why they made a change.
It seems fairly obvious only four games in: Tagovailoa has been so dominant, he has made Alabama a terrifyingly complete team. The Tide now have an explosive offense to match its dominant defense, and a dynamic quarterback who can make plays with his arm and his legs. There’s a reason Tagovailoa now leads the ESPN Heisman Watch: He has thrown for 1,033 yards and 12 touchdowns, and is completing 72.5 percent of his passes without having played in the fourth quarter this season.
To counter what Alabama now has at quarterback, it does not make much sense for Clemson to stick with Bryant in the long term. Even if we forget what happened in their semifinal matchup in the Sugar Bowl a year ago (124 yards passing, 19 yards rushing, two interceptions), Bryant does not have the arm Lawrence has, and therefore his ability to open up the passing game is more limited.
Lawrence showed that consistently last week against Georgia Tech, his finest performance to date. Bryant struggled on the first two drives, and Clemson punted. Lawrence came in and threw four touchdown passes, and Clemson rolled to the win.
You had a feeling the Tigers would move to Lawrence this week, making sure to give him the bulk of the reps moving forward to truly prepare him for a run to the College Football Playoff. Because if Clemson does meet Alabama for the fourth time in the CFP, which quarterback has a better chance to match Tagovailoa touchdown for touchdown?
Swinney, fiercely protective of his players, said during his news conference earlier this week in response to that, “Everybody wants to put last year’s Sugar Bowl on Kelly. They don’t have a clue what they’re watching. No idea. They don’t understand what happened in the game, the flow of the game, the circumstances of the game. That is such a bad narrative, and it is so far from reality, it’s not even funny. So now it’s ‘Kelly can’t win a national championship.’ Give me a break. He can beat anybody on any given day, no doubt about it.”
Yet on Wednesday, Swinney defended his decision to make the change, saying, “As a coach, sometimes you have to make tough decisions that are in the best interests of the team, and this is one of those decisions, and I would make it all over again because I believe that it’s what’s right for our team. I feel like Kelly would have continued to help us win and play a lot, but it’s not what he wanted to do.”
The decision is obviously not without risk. Clemson turned to Bryant in the second half against Texas A&M in Week 2 after Lawrence fell into a rut. You could argue Clemson loses that game without the savvy plays Bryant made in the third quarter, when he led two touchdown drives that ultimately made the difference. Afterward, Swinney had high praise for Bryant, saying, “He gave us the experience we needed in that moment to come out of here with a win.”
Now all that experience is gone, and the Tigers are left with a true freshman to help them get back to the playoff. Swinney could have kept starting Bryant to keep him from transferring. But he explained Wednesday, “That’s not how we operate here.”
Swinney says he has been as open and transparent as possible with Lawrence and Bryant since the spring. “I don’t know what else we could have done,” the coach said.
So now, Bryant and Hurts — a combined 42-4 as starting quarterbacks — find themselves on the outs after leading their respective teams to the College Football Playoff a year ago.
How Alabama and Clemson fare this time around will depend on their successors.