Welcome to the solid verbal. I'm that for me. I'm a man, I'm forty. I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy. You want to be happy for dake Edo State? Is that woo woom? And Dan and Tye.
Welcome back to the solid verbal. Boys and girls. My name is ty hilden Brandton. Joined me as always, still way over there and beautiful and sunny in southern California.
The one and only Dan Rubinstein, Sir, how you doing. I'm probably as tan right now as I was when I came home from my honeymoon tie, which is to say, feeling pretty good. I'm using a lot of alo Vera because you know, got to keep that skin skin looking great after getting so much sun. But Ty, I'm wonderful. How are you.
I'm doing well, Dan, I am doing well. It's good to be with you once more. Today we are going to be going through the final chapter of our First Place Losers series that we've been running now for a couple episodes. We're doing two thousand and what fifteen through two thousand and nineteen.
Yeah, so the twenty fifteen seasons through the twenty nineteen seasons, So technically speaking, it's the twenty sixteen College Football Playoff National Championship runner up through the twenty twenty runner up. Is my math correct correct? I believe that's it?
Okay, Thank you so much for downloading the show, for being part of the madness with us. Hope you are doing well. Hope you're washing your hands. Hope you haven't developed any kind of ominous cough or fever.
Yeah, thank you so much for downloading.
Don't forget to go on out to Spotify or Apple or Google or really anywhere you get your podcasts and listen to the show. Subscribe to the show, tell others about the show. You can also follow along. We've been doing a lot more on Instagram lately thanks to your handiwork, Daniel.
Yeah, throw us a follow on the gram Ty, we're churning out content. I'm waiting for you to follow the show here hashtag I follow the show. I know you do. I posted a picture of your hair. That's that's. If that's not reason enough to follow us on Instagram, I don't know what we're even doing. There are constant updates on Tie's air.
You hit it best like two weeks ago, and you said that my hair was assuming a leadership position.
I think that's.
Absolutely I think that's where we're at with things. I saw some other folks talk about it looking like a helmet. It is kind of a helmet. Yeah.
Where else can you find us?
Twitter? Facebook, YouTube? Yeah, YouTube. Also going out to our website at solidverbal dot com and subscribe to the newsletter. It's going to be the best way moving forward to stay in touch with what we're doing as a show.
Yeah, movingpieces, solidverbal dot com, the newsletter, all those various places we're adding. We're just adding pieces of content ty as we hopefully I think we're about one hundred days away from the alleged start to the twenty twenty seasons. So we are ramping up as schools and this is a nice little transition. Hopefully prove right here, thank you very much. As schools themselves ramp up and get we
get some campus action, voluntary workouts. Hopefully schools are taking all necessary steps to put athletes in the safest possible position as they returned to campus. I saw Clemson is June eighth, the pact. Whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa. Yeah, Okay, sorry, I'm getting ahead of mind, surely, you jest, we have.
Much you Yeah, So let's start here at the top. I think the headliner for the moment we can get into schools and conferences allowing athletes back on campuses or to take part in voluntary workouts. But the news is that this is normally the time when TV networks would reveal start times for the first three weeks of the season. Andy Staples, our friend from The Athletic, noted that, gasp, they're not doing that. They elected not to, They're delaying
that announcement. He goes into to great detail about why you shouldn't read that much into it. I think the common sense angle is, obviously, dude, we're in a pandemic. A lot remains to be seen. We should find out more in the coming days and weeks, but hold your horses for now. Just because you don't see those times out there doesn't mean there's not a season. It just means networks are trying to figure out how all this piece is together.
Correct, right. They don't want to start taking steps too quickly before knowing what states are doing, what schools are doing, what stadiums are doing. They're just sort of being as patient as possible, which I think is probably the best in terms of due diligence.
Now onto more specifics. Clemson has announced that it's bringing back athletes on June the eighth. We have the Pac twelve jumping in and saying that they're going to allow players back for voluntary workouts as of June the fifteenth, and Oklahoma going to let its players back on July the first. Interestingly enough, this may put Oklahoma about a month behind some other Power five programs who are allowing players on campus earlier for voluntary workouts.
Yeah, and it should be noted Lincoln Riley has long been a proponent of let's wait as long as we possibly can to arm ourselves with the most possible information and safety precautions, and so he has been outspoken about that. And it's not necessarily putting them behind, I think in any sort of extra meaningful way. More so that like people are getting back to campus to work out and condition,
it's not school starting football practice. So Oklahoma players are able to go out on their own and condition wherever they may be, just not on campus. So yes, Oklahoma as a university, as an athletic department, is saying, okay, let's take as much time as we can to figure out how we're doing this and what the world looks like. So I don't think Oklahoma players are going to be
any further behind. And as it relates to the PAC twelve, I believe word is that California is, as of the time we're recording this close to reopening places like gyms, and that is something that Commissioner Larry Scott has pointed to us. When that happens, that's a very good indicator about the direction we're going to go timing wise. So things seem to be progressing in that direction in my home state and the state in which I'm recording this right now.
And I think that PAC twelve news bullet is very very telling if you are if you are hopeful for a college football season. The PAC twelve was a conference I know you and I were watching very very closely because California has taken aggressive measures. Oregon and Washington had entered at some point into a bit of a pact with California to kind of do a joint reopening and align some of their policies, and it seemed for a while as if they could be the fly in the ointment.
You know, again, everyone's heart is in the right place here, But just how would that perhaps Hamper plans to move forward with a college football season now, If we're at a point where they're comfortable on June the fifteenth bringing athletes back for voluntary workouts, I think that is a good sign just from a season standpoint.
So more to follow totally for sure on this front.
We'll do our best to try and keep you abreast of the situation here each and every episode we'll talk about news. But yeah, that is your update for the moment. Not a lot to discuss, but some meaningful college football news.
Nonetheless, should also add, if you're not paying attention to Bud Elliott over at twenty four to seven, our friend Bud keeping track of the number, the sheer number of verbal commitments.
Oh god, it's gonna be a tidal wave of the commitments.
Yeah, I saw Pat Fitzgerald, I believe, talk about that. But there's something like eight hundred verbal commitments and last year at this time it was three fifty something less than fifty percent. And so if you are at all a fan of recruiting of either your team or just in general, it's going to be an active you know, based on whatever happens in the college football universe, it's going to be an active next few months, to say the least, so something to take note of.
So with all that stuff out of the way, Dan, let's talk about first Place Losers Part three. So, yes, we have spent parts one and two of this bit discussing all the runners up from two thousand and five through twenty fourteen.
Mm hmm.
The game within the game for us has been comparing those teams to one another, and more specifically to two thousand and five USC and yeah, just as like a thought experiment.
Legendary loser, Yeah, like that five USC.
That part has been really hard for me. I think for us, I think we struggled with it. And I don't know if it's like how the music from high school and college sticks with you forever or what, But like that USC team happen at such a formative time for us personally for many of our rebawlers out there, listening where you stand on five USC to some degree says a lot about your fandom.
Mm hmm. Maybe that's why I've had a hard time with it.
I don't know now though, as we get into part three, I don't know if it's recency bias. I don't know what it is, but I feel like we're at a point where it's unavoidable, Like nostalgia cannot possibly override the fact that at least three of the teams we're going to talk about here today we're undeniably better. You could probably make the case for all five, but at a minimum, I think three are just undeniably better.
There there's simply no avoiding it. We've also reached the point, I'll go through some other context, We've reached the point where the quarterback position and offenses have evolved to such a crazy point. I don't know if you ever saw, you know, those moving graphs that update by the year you're watching, Like, okay, which quarterback has the all time best QB rating? And it starts in like nineteen fifty five, and then you suddenly see it grow year after year. Okay,
now Ty Depmer has the highest ever rating. Oh wow, now okay, so and so does And you look at the top of that the efficiency marks of recent quarterbacks.
I feel as if the last fifteen years since that USC win between Johnny Football, Marcus Mariota, Cam Newton, I'm leaving people out of this, but Jameis Winston, Kyler, Murray Baker, Mayfield, Joe Burrow, all these guys are playing our leading offenses that are so electric and so ruthlessly efficient that it almost seems like we're talking about two eras ago, and even comparing eras is difficult, and now two generations, three
generations removed. I understand where you're coming from, because even twenty seventeen Jake fromm for Georgia is playing at a crazy high level given that he's a true freshman, that it's just become such a wide open sport and so quarterback friendly that it it almost becomes pretty impossible to compare with how great offenses have gotten.
So let's start here with twenty fifteen Clemson. What's interesting about this show, and you've had we had one with Oregon where we had Oregon twice in one episode, and we're going to have it multiple times here with part three, because we've got Clemson twice, we've got Alabama twice, and we've got Georgia.
In the middle.
Let's start with twenty fifteen Clemson. They finished the year fourteen and one, that one, of course, being a forty five to forty loss in Glendale in the National Championship game to the Alabama Crimson Tide. This is a very good team, very good football team. Obviously, they made it to the National Championship. Two things jump out at me though, when I go back and look at it first. And this is also going to be a recurring theme.
Dan, Yeah, My.
Entire opinion of this Clemson team I think was shaped by them beating Notre Dame in a try topical storm first week of months Soon, sir, This was the mons sooon game to start all monds Soon games. Clemson, if I remember correctly, jumped out to an early lead. Notre Dame came back late. They had a real shot. I
was at a wedding at the time. We got back from the reception after multiple adult libations, and I was fired up in front of a different group of friends than the group that normally would watch me watch Notre Dame football game, and it was jarring for them.
It was jaring.
Imagine Clemson won twenty four to twenty two. I never got over that game. I always felt like Notre Dame was good enough to win, and so I begrudgingly watched Clemson the rest of that twenty fifteen campaign.
The strongest case for Clemson as a team that either I'm not even thinking about two thousand and five USC but just as it relates to the other four teams that we're going to talk about, because to me it at first glance, it seems like they're the easy answer. As for the worst of the five teams, by the numbers, they're sort of the worst by the way they lost that National Championship game where they just lost every conceivable moment, and that includes every moment that they could have tackled
oj Howard and just didn't. But you know the two special teams play giving up the touchdown and then giving up that the on side kick that they allowed Alabama to recover. But really, the case for this twenty to fifteen Clemson team as being worthy and or better than any of the other first place losers is the acc was actually pretty good in twenty fifteen. They had to make their way through and this is pre Lamar Jackson Louisville,
and they barely got by them. It's Kyle Bollan, I believe they get by Notre Dame and the Monsoon by two. Louisville was a three point win. Georgia Tech is pretty good. Miami's pretty awful. This is the last year of al Golden and they just completely obliterate the Canes. It's fifty eight nothing. But NC State is good and they have a bit of a shootout against them. It's a total bloodbath. Against Florida State, they kind of look not great against Syracuse.
That was a game late. It was a four and eight Syracuse team, I believe, and they didn't look amazing and separating from South Carolina three and nine South Carolina team, but a legit, a legit North Carolina team in the a SEC championship game that they need in off side on side, they were ruled out. North Carolina ruled off sides on an onside kick attempt at the end of the game. And then of course they beat a good Oklahoma team in the first round of the playoff by twenty.
So the case is that they had to weather a stronger schedule leading up to Alabama than perhaps they had to do in previous seasons. Yeah, I so, and they did. They did, They didn't. They didn't separate a lot, but they at least were a little bit more proven. I think that's fair. The other thing that jumps out to me, just looking up and down this roster, this is a great team. It's still not as great as what the team would become over the next couple of years, not
even close. There's just such a difference between being great and now as they are going into next season, as they were this past season cartoonishly loaded.
Which is how I would classify it. That's sort of where we're at now. All that said, they had fourteen guys from this starting roster that got picked in the NFL draft. This was the Deshaun Watson Show.
On offense.
He threw for thirty five touchdowns over forty one hundred yards. He rushed for another twelve eleven hundred yards on the ground. He had Wayne Gallman going over fifteen hundred yards. He had Artavis Scott as his leading riskiver, a young Dion Caine, a young Hunter Renfro. He had Jordan Legott, Sharon Peak also on his team out wide. Defensively, very stout. You want to talk about recurring themes that's been a staple of this run by Clemson. A crazy pass rush with
Kevin Dodd and Shack Losson up front. Both of them had twelve and a half sacks, which is crazy. They were just living in opposing backfields. They eventually make it to this National championship game after rolling their way through their semi final playoff matchup, and that squares them off against the Alabama Crimson tied again. This is a wild game,
a fun game. Forty five to forty was your final, with Alabama grabbing a lead in the second quarter, sort of holding serve for the duration of the game before they eventually got more breathing room on a long touchdown reception by OJ Howard followed by a kick return by Kenyon Drake that sprung them gave them enough breathing room I think to kind of take this one through to completion.
Yeah, Jake Coker like lit them up. Yeah, Jake Coker was fantastic. Derek Henry has a couple long runs, he finishes. I mean, his average on the ground wasn't great, but he has he wins moments, and you mentioned Oj Howard, we both did, and just every conceivable moment Clemson could have lost. Deshaun Watson throws a bad pick to I think it was Eddie Jackson, and Clemson just had opportunities.
Alabama scores twenty four points in the fourth quarter to come back and win this game, a back and forth game late, so Clemson just not fully ready for prime time to compete with Bama for sixty minutes. So still a really really strong Clemson team, not the strongest Clemson team, maybe even not even a top two Clemson team of this era, but nonetheless a wildly successful season.
The other thing here, if I can get vulgar for a second, If that's okay.
Ty, let's do it. Come on.
The playoff games are on New Year's Eve. This is when they tried to spin that bullshit about oh he starting a new tradition. Remember they had this song by Jimmy Kimmel is New Year's Eve will be remember this thing, of course, And it was fun. It was a fun song.
I appreciate that song, but it was bullshit too. And in the end, they'll try to move our plans around to watch and be part of a playoff and Clemson and one by twenty over Oklahoma and Alabama shutout in Michigan State and it was all for not It was like,
not that exciting anyway. Where does twenty fifteen Clemson stant you versus other teams that we're going to talk about well, I guess we could talk about where they rank relative to the other teams in a little bit, but where do they rank relative to five USC.
Two teams who struggled with big moments on the big stage. I'm probably gonna go USC here, but not by much, not by much. This was twenty fifteen, I believe was also the first year of Clemson with the offensive coordinator duo, so they were still getting used to that. It was Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott. But uh yeah, I'm going to USC. Buy a hair here, all right.
Twenty sixteen then kind of is a natural segue because twenty sixteen Alabama was a rematch between Clemson Alabama. This time Deshaun Watson got the better of the Crimson Tide. They win thirty five to thirty one. This game was played in Tampa. Yet another year of semi final games on New Year's Eve, another year of blowout. So we move our plans around Washington and Ohio State get drilled, setting up this rematch in the title game, and just
sticking with Clemson for a second. The only had I have only in air quotes, only eleven guys drafted from this Clemson starting lineup but I thought they were better. They were just bets on both offense and defense. Statistically, that bears itself out, and the big statistical shift if you go back and look at it, Dan, was Clemson not being as reliant on Deshaun Watson's legs. Right, he had five hundred fewer rushing yards this season, but the legs were there in the big games. If you go back,
if you plot out, yes, his rushing attempts. It was the bigger, closer games where Deshaun just decided, like, screw it, I'm taking.
Over twenty plus carries against Bama in a winning effort this year in the National Championship game.
The other thing here of note, it was a much more battle tested Clemson team, way more close games, seven to one score games. Even had that weird loss at home against pitt in weird week of November.
Some people say incredible, Well, it was incredible, but it was just a weird spot for them to lose. Losing to Nate Peterman has not aged well, has not aged twelve for Clemson.
On the Alabama side of things, Dan, we had Jalen Hurts as a true freshman, right, he won the starting job.
Yeah, so he comes in. He relieves Blake Barnett against USC and Jerry World in Week one and just an absolute blowout over the Trojans. Certainly, USC becomes a different team with Sam Darnold a couple games later and they end up winning the Rose Bowl. So I guess in retrospect that kind of reflects well on Alabama, but different quarterback, first game of the year, whatever, Alabama. Still that was not It was not a pretty day for the Trojans.
They survive ole Miss week three in a game I distinctly remember what Nick Saban looked like and sounded like after they survived the shootout against ole Miss. I think it's in Oxford, forty eight to forty three. He looks like the weight of the world has just drained his body. He looks so relieved that he was just rescued off of a sinking ship at the very last moment. But
they shut out LSU, They obliterate Mississippi State. They dropped fifty on Florida in the SEC championship game, and they make efficient work I would say of Washington holding down the Husky offense to seven points in the semi final, and that was It's a Jake brown It was a very good Washington team. Obviously that makes the playoff, but it's an injured Jake Browning team, not really able to get anything going on offense. So ultimately just a hell
of a year for Alabama. But going against that Clemson team, Jalen Hurts is not able to do basically anything down the field with his arm. It's okay, they kind of get it done with his legs. But in terms of what the Alabama offensive murder machine would become, they weren't there. On offense. They just weren't. It was I think it was Bo Scarborough running things, taking over for Derrick Henry.
He would have some amazing individual moments and runs, but the offense was still a tick or two behind what it would become under Mike Locksley and Josh Gaddis.
The defense, though, was loaded who the defense was good, The defense was loaded. So this was a very talented Bama team. So you went about the offense and how it was constructed. In many ways, this was a seminal moment for that Alabama offense. This was Kiffen, This was Steve Sarkejian taking the offense in a direction that it that it hadn't been before, but frankly has been ever since.
Jalen Hurts ran for almost thousand yards, which was a far cry from what we saw back in the days of Greg McElroy and AJ mccheron with the prototypical drop back guy Jim mcwa offenses. Yet, yeah, Jim, Jalen Hurts, excuse me, was certainly a different kind of quarterback than we had seen at Bama, and they found a way to use that to great effect. Overall, this was a Bama team that had nineteen of its twenty two starters drafted into the league, which is great. Everyone on the
defense got drafted, with the exception of one defensive back. Okay, and like you said, they pretty much rolled everybody. They had that old miss shootout, which got a little crazy, But the level of talent in this defense was preposterous. I think you sent it over before. I mean, the defense was little. Everything here was just preposterous on the defensive side of the ball. In this game, they jump
out to a fourteen point lead. Clemson just nibbles. He nibbled the way back in the fourth quarter was nuts. Clemson outscores Bama twenty one to seven, including a two yard touchdown pass to Hunter Renfro with one second left, which gave Clemson the win, gave the Sean Watson that signature victory. Jalen Hurts did of trouble against his Clemson defense, but this was still a team that I look back, I say they're better than O five USC. Just they had the defense. They had so much talent on offense.
Maybe it wasn't quite ramped up to where it eventually would go, but the level of talent to me was just so superior on this team that I got to give them the nod.
Yeah, I'm going to agree, And especially with what if we're going to specifically compare against the USC defense of two thousand and five. The best of Jalen Hurts in twenty sixteen is using his legs, and so he would have been able to move the ball that way against SC and I think you're right. I mean, it's a tough comparison with this team against the other four teams
we're talking about. I still have them against ahead of twenty fifteen Clemson, even though I would happily take Deshaun Watson over Jalen Hurts running my potential national championship team.
The defense is just that stupid in twenty sixteen. So it's what Reuben Foster, Ronnie Harrison, Jonathan Allen up front, both Minka Fitzpatrick and Marlon Humphrey, Anthony Averetts, Dalvin Tomlinson, Shawn Dion Hamilton, these are It's annoying that a player like I think Deron Payne was a rotation guy on this team, Eddie Jackson in the back end, DeShawn Han's a rotation guy. So I just when something is to that extreme, I'm just going to give them the nods.
So a really impressive year, and this was also the year, if you remember, Lane Kiffin is sort of asked to leave after the Washington semi as he takes the Fau job and it becomes sort of a distraction, and so Sark takes over. He has one game to call in the National Championship game. Wasn't particularly a pretty day for Alabama's offense, but that's kind of one hand behind your back, so excusable on some level, but not on the winning level.
Clemson takes at thirty five to thirty one and wins every moment, including that Hunter Renfro winning catch at the very end, which If your team wins on a pick play, it's part of football. If your team loses on a pick play, it's a dastardly penalty. And that's how it ended, all right.
So moving on then to twenty seventeen. This show is nothing if not smoothly transitioning from one season to the next. And that's because all the same teams are involved, like every year. Yeah, correct, Bama gets back to this title game, this time though squaring off against a common SECFO there up against Georgia. Now, Georgia had a very interesting year. I mentioned at the top with twenty fifteen Clemson how their win over Notre Dame kind of shade in my
view of them. Seventeen Oria falls into the same category.
This time. It was stuck in my crawl all year because I legit felt like Notre Dame should have won that game.
Second game of the year. Shot to provide context. Second game of the year, Jake From makes his first start on the road. Jake Easton got hurt, and From steps in and goes to South Bend, does just enough to win, doesn't turn the ball over. You know how we talk about Alabama and how they took Jalen Hurts and they found a way to open things up and change the
offense forever more. The exact opposite happened really with Jake FROMM and Georgia, and certainly in year one he was more of that prototypical drop back dare I say game manager style. They ran the ball a lot this year. Nick Chubb, Sony Michelle DeAndre Swift that try as well.
They should have, by the way, with those.
Oh oh yeah, and they're line I mean, they're very, very good and stout up front. But collectively those three guys rushed four hundred and sixty times for almost thirty two hundred yards and thirty four touchdowns. Like there was there was no debate over what the strength of this offense was.
Right right, totally.
This is a team that lost on the road, believe it or not, at Auburn by a forty to seventeen score in mid November. They eventually do work their way into the College Football playoff. In that playoff game, then he double overtime to knock off Oklahoma great game, fifty four to forty eight, and then they went overtime again, this time they lose twenty six to two, twenty three to the Alabama Crimson Tide. This one was in Atlanta. We actually did interviews on Facebook.
Yeah, I remember mccol hardman being very nice, very nice this game.
This loss for Georgia was notable because this was the to A game, Right, This is where to to A cemented his legacy in college football.
Yeah, TWA comes in at halftime after j Aalen hurts is ineffective in the first half. I don't believe they get on the board, right, Alabama in the first half of this game. And so Tua comes in and throws some good, throws some bad, and then throws some all time excellence in the game winning throw to Devonte Smith. So some context about this season, I think you covered
a lot of it. Yes, true freshman and Jake from stepping in the fact that they're able to get to the National Championship game, the fact that they're able to win a double overtime game against Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma with that true freshman in that duel, that's just crazy impressive.
Should say, it's the first team we've discussed of these first three that has not only lost a regular season game twenty fifteen clumps in twenty six Alabama both go undefeated during the regular season, they get shellacked by Auburn. This is the best Auburn defense of the modern era, the two thousand and seventeen Auburn defense. Yes. And the great news for Georgia though, is in the case to
get into the National Championship game. I suppose into the playoff, they have a second chance at Auburn in the SEC Championship game, who had just dispatched Jalen Hurts and Alabama in the SEC championship in the Iron Bowl excuse me, twenty six, thirteen fourteen, something like that, And so Georgia does have that opportunity to say we have dramatically improved or gotten our act together since I think it was Week nine or ten against Auburn on the road on
a neutral site. They comfortably beat Auburn, and then they get to Alabama in the National Championship Game and play an incredible first half defensively against Jalen Hurts, really demoralized the entire Alabama team with how well they have played on defense and ultimately can't beat Alabama's backup, who we now know is amazing. But if there's something working against Georgia in the case for the best of these five
teams or beating two thousand and five USC. It is that against a cold quarterback who does have experience playing in this offense and blowouts over the course of this season,
they eventually lose to a old backup quarterback. So the case is that they're a complete team, loaded at running back and defense, so talented, like I mentioned, but there are a couple things holding me back, and it is that that blowout loss to Auburn, and it is the fact that a backup quarterback can come in and whether an incredible I think it's Meltucker coordinating this defense and just lose the big moment at the end.
The interesting thing about this team is, you know, backup quarterback, he comes in, he's able to lead the offense. Had a really good campaign as a true freshman, no doubt about it.
Yeah, oh was able to utilize that rushing attack and win some games ugly but very effectively.
Nonetheless, they obviously make it to the National Championship game. They had a very good chance of winning this game. They scored first in overtime. If it's not for that to a pass, maybe they win.
Very good season.
But you look at this roster, and you think to yourself, this was a team that was led by defense, right, this is a defensive team.
Yeah, this is Rokwan Smith, DeAndre Walker, Lorenzo Carter, Jonathan Ledbetter. I mean, they're talented on all three levels. These are NFL players.
Only two guys got drafted into the league on that defense, from Kwan Smith and DeAndre Baker. Nine of their starters were drafted from offense.
Believe it or not, didn't.
Get much a Clinton talking about the following season or old.
I'm just talking overall in general.
Okay, okay, So a pretty good collection of talent on offense, whether they got drafted in the you know, a draft immediately following the National championship, or at some point later in their careers.
DeAndre Walker was drafted.
To be clear anyway, with regard to this game, the two a game, Georgia led thirteen to nothing in half. As you said, they shut out Alabama first half. They lead twenty to seven way through the third quarter, and then Tua Tua sort of takes over in the second half. He's out there just immediately takes the rings, takes charge. Those three touchdowns for Bama in one half of work. He throws one inside four minutes to tie it up. He has to weather the storm as Georgia gets the
ball first an ot and kicks a field goal. They're down twenty three to twenty and then of course that perfect forty one yard strike to Devonte Smith to give Bama the walk off win, to again cement his own legacy as part of college football lore. He's obviously gone onto great things in college football and in his time at Alabama. A heartbreaking loss for the Georgia ball talks, to say the least, to.
Get this close.
For what it's worth, it's not like this loss knocked Georgia off its trajectory. They're still in a very very good spot. They're going to have some turnover at quarterback, and we can obviously talk about that as we get more into previews, but the team and the program are still in a very good spot. They were just so close here. This is such a stomach punch. If you were a Georgia Bulldogs fan, I.
Would argue Jake from never really was the same, that he kind of regressed, and that's a coordinator thing. It's a talent thing, and it's not as if in these were good wide receivers. They didn't have a killer at receiver this year. It's what Javon Whims, Terry Godwin, McCole, Hardman hadn't fully come into his own in twenty seventeen, so they were led ground game wise. On offense, they just I don't think they had the complete look of
a downfield a consistent downfield attack if that's what they needed. Now. Obviously they score fifty two in double overtime against Oklahoma, so they can keep up with the best offensively. It's not an actual big picture issue. But if you're comparing them against previous years and previous downfield attacks, receiving corps, quarterbacks, whatever, maybe if we're in the margins here, that's where you can knock Georgia a little bit, all right, So where.
Do they stand? Where do they stand? If we're doing the comparison, not just to five USC but twenty sixteen Alabama.
Bbama and yeah, yeah, So I have I have in my rankings of these five teams right now, it's sort of inn order. I have the bottom number five, twenty fifteen Clemson, number four twenty sixteen Alabama, and then number three I have twenty seventeen Georgia, so I actually have it in sort of I guess chronological or reverse chronological order thus far.
Yeah, I think I agree with that.
I hate the blowout loss, I really do. If we're if we're nitpicking the blowout loss to Auburn. I think they even were favorites against Jared Stidham and the Tigers, and that I mean that plays perfectly into my you know, always always always take home dogs with good defenses in tough places to play, and that worked out.
I think without the loss, and maybe with more of a passing component, I'm inclined to go Georgia over that five USC. But I don't think. I don't think the final version of that team very very good. Don't get me wrong, I don't. I don't think I can make that case, not to you, not to myself, that they're better than our five.
So see, yeah, I am. Yeah, I go back and forth. But yeah, I think it's a good game.
Final two now, twenty eighteen, again is Alabama. Alabama loses forty four to sixteen to Clemson. This is the game they played in Santa Clara. This is an awesome team. This was a death machine that we talked about all year. They killed almost everyone they played. They were number one from the start of the year all the way through until they lost that title game to Clemson. TUA through forty three touchdowns to just six interceptions and didn't run much.
He didn't have to. They were trying to keep them up right, murder machine.
He did run into a buzzsaw that was Clemson and Trevor will Lawrence in that title game. But I know just from looking at your rankings that you've got twenty eighteen Alabama as not just the top team of these five, but maybe just like the top team in general of all the teams that we've discussed.
Well, So it brings up an interesting question. What do we consider twenty eighteen Alabama to be. Are they the twenty nine to nothing team over LSU in Baton Rouge with a largely healthy TOUA and defense, or are they beat up to he gets beat up in the I guess it's Georgia and the SEC Championship game. Beats is good enough to beat Oklahoma, but certainly doesn't look like himself because he's playing an all time great Clemson team
in the in the National Championship. But if we are saying in a vacuum big picture, are we saying these teams at full health? I think we should, Okay, just making sure because we are. I'm not saying it's an excuse, but I want to if I'm comparing twenty eighteen Bama against all the other teams and against USC, I'm going
to take that tact. You can adjust accordingly. If you're listening to this, or if you are Tie hilden Brent and also listening to this, I have twenty eighteen Alabama on top, and it is it's that murder machine thing. It's that incredible offense. It's a defense that while not twenty eleven or even what twenty sixteen amazing is still great, is still capital e elite, and I still feel like even with the result, the best of Alabama is probably neck and neck and not losing was forty four to
sixteen against Clemson. They're not You know, this is all hypothetical because we actually know what happened when the two played, and that was Alabama wasn't able to take advantage of scoring opportunities because Clemson's defense was incredible and Trevor Lawrence
was able to complete pin pin pin pinpoint passes. Over and over again to what Justin Ross and t Higgins in Alabama with a backing core that'speed up, with a secondary that's not where it had been and not where it should be, was unable to get in front of Trevor Lawrence Passes. So I still think the best of this Alabama team, which is to a healthy not as good as twenty eighteen Clemson, but better than twenty sixteen Bama twenty fifteen Clemson, twenty seventeen Georgia, a fully realized
to a murder machine, to a murder machine. Yes, absolutely, when they really open up the RPO game, when they really are just it's it's there. This is a bottom line team. And I don't mean bottom line they're great. I mean the literal ESPN bottom line where they are forty seven seconds into a game and they're up twenty one to nothing. That sort of murder machine where you're like somebody screwed up in Bristol in typing in the data and typing in the score or whatever some sort
of feed is off, turns out not so much. That's when you have murder machine status, just like LSU had this past season.
Do you find yourself bored bored at how good some of these teams were, and perhaps how we please explain well how it shaded you as just a fan. There is sort of this feeling of inevitability with regard to both Alabama and Clemson. We're going to talk about Clemson again nineteen season, right of course we are.
This is Alabama Clemson with one Georgia. Yeah yeah, so. And this is not just me saying it. We've had people right in.
We've read it on Twitter, We've heard other people talk about it. How the sheer dominance by these two schools have really affected how we feel as fans, that notion that it's already somewhat decided even as we start week one of the season, we perhaps come at it from a little bit of a different angle. Being so we cover everything, we try to have fun with it. But I can imagine if you're not in our shoes, if
you're watching just from your own team's perspective. Maybe you're a I don't know, maybe you're a Mississippi State fan or an old missfan, and knowing that you've got these Juggernauts in the South in your own conference. It makes it an interesting proposition, doesn't it.
I think so. But at the same time, if we're looking back and we're looking at the roster and we're looking at what we now know about Tua, what we now know about Jerry Judy, Henry Ruggs, Jalen Wattle, Oj Howard's gone by then DeVante Smith we had seen at this point, and then a running back core of I believe it's Damien Harris, Josh Jacobs and Nase Harris, Harris Ranch as we like to call it. Sure, it's what
it should have been. They just they basically hit their expectation ceiling, or maybe they surpassed reasonable expectations given what we had seen from Nick Saban and Alabama offenses in years past. But we now know that this all makes sense. It's there's some teams where you look back and you say, how did this team lead the nation in offensive efficiency or whatever, and you're like, Okay, they had this single great player or whatever. It would have been very difficult.
And you can look at those Oklahoma teams with Lincoln Riley, whatever, but it would have been very difficult looking back at this Alabama team and saying they're not all that dominant. So I in terms of boredom, yes, because I like watching games that are back and forth to some level and that are interesting in the middle of the third quarter or even the middle of the second quarter. But at the same time, this Alabama team lost when they were on the biggest possible stage that counts. I mean,
that's at least something and not only they lose. And the case against this Alabama team is that they got embarrassed in their biggest possible game. They got embarrassed. They need Jalen Hurts to pull out the SEC Championship game against Georgia Oklahoma. They're able to hold them down in the beginning, and the Sooners, you know, come back with Kyler Murray impressively, but don't really have a full chance
in the opening round of the College Football Playoff. But to shut out LSU, to shut out a ranked Mississippi State team, to just completely lay waste and barrass everybody else they play, I'm bored by it. But I don't have to rewatch and live it right now, so I can just sit back and be impressed. And that's that's fine. I'm okay with it.
I put twenty eighteen Alabama at the top of this list. Same at the top of this list, not just on this episode, the whole thing.
Yeah, here's I mean, if we're going I mean we're going into obviously twenty nineteen Clemson next, because that's all that's left. But a difference to me between two teams that just get run out of the stadium on the on the national championship stage. Alabama in twenty eighteen, here's a full list of their close calls. Georgia in the SEC Championship game. That's it, and that's the number four
team in the country. They score fifty against Auburn, and then as we mentioned, I think it's it's a combined fifty plus to nothing against Mississippi State and LSU and consecutive weeks. And that's in baton rouge. So in terms of close calls during the actual regular season, that doesn't exist. Clemson in twenty nineteen has the North Carolina game. Yeah, and they have an acc that is pretty putrid. So that's the lean to me of two teams that got
run out of the stadium on the biggest stage. I'm going with that Alabama offense at.
Full health that leads us to our final team here.
Yeah, can I back up real quick? Can I back up? Real quick, how did Clemson get to I mean, they win the national championship in twenty it's the twenty eighteen season. Who do they beat to get to Alabama in the National Championship game? Oh god, so Clemson takes down Notre Dame thirty to three. There are no losers. But if you didn't score double digit points in a playoff game, Washington, Notre Dame, Michigan State, I think during this time you're
getting a little bit closer. Sorry, continue moving on. Sorry, I didn't want I know people were thinking it and they were like, well, they won't they It's a sort of a ross Rachel Notre Dame situation. I just wanted to make sure they will. Twenty nineteen, Clemson.
Killed pretty much everyone but North Carolina and Ohio State. I guess in the semi final correct, everyone else they destroyed. They finally make it to the National Championship Game. Hopefully everyone remembers the National Championship Game only happened a few months ago. They lose forty two to twenty five. They run into a buzzsaw. The buzz saw is Joe Burrow. The buzzsaw is that electric LSU offense. I don't know, if anybody beats them, it's.
Not even a murder machine, it's a murder cloud. They have so much control. Yeah, ridiculous.
Even if you thought there was a chance Clemson could lose that game to LSU, nobody thought they'd give up forty two points. It was a really good defense. It just it speaks volumes about how good Ls's offense was. That they were able to just straight up outscore m Clemson the way they did killed them.
Yeah, absolutely killed them. I arguably the best defense in the country Clemson.
Yeah, I think I could make the case that Clemson, for all its glory, was still underappreciated because of how they rolled through a bad acc Yeah, you didn't get full credit for that.
Well, we're all just we've talked about this during the season to that point. When when was Clemson must watch TV during the regular season? Exactly for the first quarter against random five and seven teams, there was not much. Everybody gather around, we think this might be the week that Clemson really gets a challenge That just didn't exist.
We never really even took it seriously that they might lose. That's why that's why that UNC game was such a pleasant surprise. I'm not rooting against Clemson, but just from a TV product standpoint, Yeah, yeah, drama to have competition and drama in a Clemson game that was new news, right, It's great, absolutely, But they roll through the ACC which was down.
Let's be honest, it was down.
They make it all the way through to that title game and they run into this buzzsaw. They'll go down in history as losing by seventeen points. This is still just a really good team, really good team, really good quarterback, great talent up and down the roster, good solid defense. They're to me second behind twenty eighteen Alabama. If we're ranking these teams, they're definitely in front of five USC.
A couple things, Ty, I think you're correct with everything. Should also point out that Ohio State was also a team that scored fewer than double digits because they lost thirty one nothing to Clemson on December thirty first, twenty sixteen. So I didn't want I didn't want to have an own mission there of all those of that roundup of the non double ditch. Second of all, you're absolutely right, I have Clemson behind the twenty nineteen Clemson behind twenty
eighteen Alabama in terms of these five teams. But I think they beat USC just because they're a more complete team and Trevor Lawrence offers something dynamic that would be hard for any team at any point in history to handle. I'm also going to hear that, and we'll hear whatever some reaction like, well, they call that a fumble. Ohio State, it's a national championship game and they're built to better take down LSU. Perhaps. No, No, I'm going to say I'm going to say no on that because Ohio State
had opportunities. Ohio State had opportunities against Clemson. They go up sixteen to nothing, and their next four drives, three of which they go three and out, all four of they punt, and then the fifth they throw an interception. They have an opportunity at the end of the game and they throw an interception. So we're not talking about a back and forth. We're not talking about fully maximizing potential on all offense against a Clemson team never really
going through stretches of struggle. We're talking about an Ohio State team that made a ton of mistakes. And if Clemson is a team that wins by the narrowest of margins, able to beat them on an interception to seal things at the very end of the game and then get run out of the stadium by the LSU Murder Cloud. I'm not believing in Ohio State being better suited to
compete with the Cloud. I'm just not there. So with that out of the way, the twenty nineteen Clemson team once they got North Carolina, and that's scare and allowing North Carolina to milk the clock and sit on the ball. Once they got that out of their system and they get that last second two point conversion stop to beat
the tar Heels, they were incredible. Yeah, Travis Etn is one of the joys that I've personally had watching him since the onset of our show in two thousand and eight, since we started this program, watching Travis Etn in the open field with you know, running the score up to such a crazy degree that he's just not playing fourth quarters, that he is making legitimately fast players look slow in
his wake. He is one of the joys. And obviously the emergence of Clemson as wide receiver, you with all these guys they put into the league, with Trevor Lawrence coming in as the most heralded quarterback of whatever we can remember as a recruit and surpassing those expectations. It's been just an amazing watch for me. So I have them nipping on the heels of twenty eighteen Alabama. But still, if we're on the margins, that's where I'm that's where I'm reserving my judgment.
This is just such a really good team.
It's so good. I mean, it's impossible to parse. It really is impossible. It's so hard.
And I sat down in the laboratory shortly before hitting record trying to suss out where I came down on twenty nineteen Clemson. And part of this is made harder by the fact that it's just so recent. I don't have the benefit of looking back five years in that perspective comparing them to teams that came out after, and so you know, maybe with some age they will grow even fonder in my mind, But at least as it stands now, it's like part of me can't believe they lost.
I still can't believe that they lost.
I can believe the kind of season Joe Burrow had and that instant transformation that we saw at LSU that will go down in college football history. Is perhaps the greatest season of all time from an offensive standpoint, But this is still such a dominant Clemson squad. The fact that they lost in the manner that they did it highlights how good LSU was, and it still seems a little surreal to me.
Yeah, a lot of the cases here are twenty fifteen Clemson wasn't fully there. They lose to an Alabama team with Heisman Trophy winner, with just a ton of talent, and even like the twenty sixteen Alabama team is great and in many years they're winning the national championship, and they run into a once in a lifetime twenty sixteen Deshaun Watson led Clemson team and then Georgia that in a lot of years they're good enough to win the
national championship. They run into a once in a lifetime backup quarterback star and lose on a once in a lifetime maybe the best and most dramatically successful pass of
all time. I mean, just we're talking about thin margins, where like these teams aren't good enough in most years to hold up the whatever the college football trophy is called, the Hancock Trophy, I don't know what it's called, and then Clemson just with how complete they are on both sides of all, replacing what they did on the defensive line from twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen and not missing a beat at all, in fact, with Isaiah Simmons becoming
even more creative with how they move players around their defense, and they run into the best college football offense of all time, yeah, the best. Yeah. And so there's just a certain degree of and it's not even losing moments. Sometimes it is it's just plain old dumb luck, that's all it is. No Jamar Chase two hundred and twenty one yards wins the Bolittnikov out of nowhere, out of
friggin nowhere. Joe Burrow has an encouraging season in twenty eighteen and twenty eighteen, and then in twenty nineteen just obliterates everything. Clyde Edwards Hilaire, Oh, I see he's a nice back turns into what are we supposed to do with this guy? What the hell are we supposed to do with Clyde? And so sometimes it's just bad friggin' luck.
Bad friggin' luck. All right, let's rank these out here and call it a day. I've got I think the same ranking as you, twenty eighteen Alabama, twenty nineteen Clemson, twenty seventeen Georgia, twenty sixteen Alabama, and twenty fifteen Clemson.
Yeah, that's what I have, and I think there's a good case for each of these teams. I'm going to go with Georgia having the worst case as for beating two thousand and five USC, but still a pretty damn good case. Yeah.
All right, Well that does it for our first place losers. Bit here three parts. Go back and listen to the first two. If you haven't already, you can go on out to our website at soliverbal dot com and find all of our old stuff, all over old episodes. If you want to listen back, don't forget to subscribe and listen and follow along on Spotify, on Apple, on Google, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Yeah, and I think moving forward, we're going to be doing more Q and a's, and that is going to be a If it's not the main, it will be a main repository that you can drop questions. Even when we're not saying, hey, ask us any question about X, Y or Z. You can just start dropping questions into a thread we'll start on the subreddit that we can go check on and sort of cherry pick which ones we like best. And that's a good way to get your question answered on our upcoming Q and A shows
that we're ramping up. This is true.
Okay, well, Daniel, this has been fun. Thanks for hanging with me. Thank you to everyone out there for hanging with us as we go through all these great seasons in college football. Some more disappointing than others, but fun nonetheless to walk back through fifteen years of college football runners up. A lot of fun for that guy over there, my good friend Dan Rubinstein, for myself, Tie hilding Brand. Thanks again, everyone, stay solid, stay safe, wash your hands, and we catch you all in a week.
Peace,