As we do with each ACC Bowl Team, we take a look back at a team’s game and look ahead. Clemson in the national title game was the last ACC school to finish their football season. It didn’t go well.
LSU took care of Clemson 42-25. Clemson was a great team. LSU was a better one… period.
Brent Venables had done an amazing job all year with smoke and mirrors hiding deficiencies along the defensive line. You just don’t replace 4 NFL defensive linemen without a dropoff. LSU just happened to be the first team to really expose them.
Honestly I didn’t think the defense played all that poorly. They stopped a number of LSU drives. Of course LSU was going to get theirs, and Clemson was going to have to win in a shootout type game.
That’s what surprised me. The normally unflappable Trevor Lawrence didn’t play well. He overthrew receivers, and didn’t show his normal poise in the pocket. LSU’s rush was pretty good, but not anymore than Ohio State in the semi-finals or Alabama the previous year.
He left a ton of third downs out there too. LSU QB Joe Burrow did a better job on third down and made more of the critical plays. It didn’t hurt that Burrow’s receivers won their one on one battles while the Clemson receivers didn’t play with the physicality they needed too.
Congrats to LSU, Clemson should be right back in the playoffs next year yet again improving in areas that LSU took advantage of.
Clemson is still heads and shoulders and torsos better than anyone in the ACC, and should blow through their schedule with relative ease.
A game at Notre Dame looms, but that’s in November when Clemson’s #1 ranked class will have played for 2 months. That’s a dangerous game, but one that Clemson will enter favored. The ACC Title game could have a UNC team that nearly beat Clemson this year. Louisville could be top 25 caliber, but overall it’s a schedule that is only marginally tougher than this season.
The Tigers are in that rarefied air with Alabama. You might beat them, but when the next year rolls around they are on the short list of teams that can win it all.
With Trevor Lawrence back, 2020 will be no different. Clemson is a national power that’s not going anywhere.
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