TAMPA — If you didn’t think last year’s College Football Playoff championship game between Alabama and Clemson could be topped, don’t feel bad.
Last season's 45-40 Alabama victory after a see-saw fourth quarter was pure drama. Yet leave it to Gainesville’s own Deshaun Watson to find a way to rewrite history -- as he did on Monday.
Watson’s 2-yard touchdown pass to Hunter Renfrow with 1 second left lifted the Tigers to a thrilling 35-31 come-from-behind win over the Crimson Tide for their first national title since 1981. The throw capped a typically quick yet methodical 9-play, 68-yard drive in just 2:00 with the season, and his legacy, on the line.
The game wasn’t necessarily about Watson, but any real college football fan knows that he has been the game's best player over the past two seasons, despite not winning a Heisman Trophy either campaign. (A travesty of justice, but that’s another story.)
He showed it when it mattered most Monday night.
As a life-long Alabama fan, I was never comfortable when he had the ball in his hands. I knew from my experience of watching Watson grow up in Gainesville and leading the Red Elephants, you never want to give him a second bite at the apple. I was proven correct again.
He connected with Jordan Leggett for 5 yards, then Mike Williams on a leaping, 24-yard pass, Renfrow for 6 yards, and then a clutch throw to Leggett again for 17 yards to the Alabama 9 with just 19 seconds remaining. He finished off the drive, the game, and his career with an all-too-familiar play -- if you followed Gainesville High -- with a roll-out to the right to find a wide-open Renfrow on a crossing pattern/pick play just inside the end zone for the game-winning score.
“We knew if we got the pick (Hunter) would be open and it was there,” Watson said. “I just thank God for the chance to be here. This is for all the guys that were here before us and all the Clemson fans. It's also for my hometown of Gainesville (Georgia). It’s really indescribable.”
As always, he never takes full responsibility for a win nor all the glory for himself. It’s what makes him someone that is almost impossible not to root for. He finished the game 36-for-56 for 420 yards passing and three touchdowns. In two championship games against the Alabama defense, considered the best in college football, he passed for 825 yards and seven touchdowns. He is the only quarterback to do that against a Nick Saban defense.
What more did the Heisman voters need? Do you think they may want to rethink that one?
The heroics were nothing new for Watson, who also made history with the Red Elephants, leading them to the 2012 Class AAAAA state title -- their first-ever in GHSA. On this occasion the Tigers trailed Alabama 24-14 heading into the fourth quarter. For the first 69 times under Nick Saban, it was lights out for the opposition.
For Deshaun on this night, it was a recipe that ignites that ever-burning fire inside to "be legendary" as he told his offensive unit in the huddle to begin what would be the championship-winning drive.
Watson had guided the Tigers to within 24-21 just moments into the final period with a 4-yard TD pass to Williams and then went 4-for-4 on their next drive, capped by a 1-yard run from Wayne Gallman with 4:38 left, to give them their first lead of the game at 28-24. The key play was a 15-yard Watson run to the Alabama 1 the play before. It was the first time in the Nick Saban-era that Alabama had blown a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter.
But Watson would still need one more chapter after the Tide, and their freshman phenom quarterback Jalen Hurts, answered right back. Hurts gave Alabama the lead back at 31-28 with 2:07 left when he capped a 6-play drive with an improbable 30-yard touchdown scamper through the heart of the Clemson defense.
But after watching Watson and the Tigers basically just run out of time in last year’s finale, the 2:07 left had to seem like an eternity for the vaunted Tide defense. It was just enough for Watson.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was not shy in his post-game, and post-career, assessment of his star quarterback.
“Deshaun showed why he is the best player in the country,” Swinney said. “He and this whole team never quit and just showed the heart of a champion. I love this team and these players.”
I, too, love watching Deshaun play. But after two years of heart-stopping classics, all I can say is thank goodness he is moving on to the NFL. I don’t know if I can take a rubber-game showdown between Alabama and Clemson for another national title with Deshaun at the helm.
Deshaun is as smooth as glass and as tough to break as double-pained windows. He took half-a-dozen shots Monday night that would have felled lesser men just to prove it.
But as a lifelong Alabama fan -- I grew up in Tuscaloosa so what do you want from me -- the last two championship games have been nearly unbearable to watch.
I can’t ever root against the Tide. But I’m also a HUGE Deshaun fan -- how can you NOT like Deshaun -- and I find it hard to root against him. Would we be singing a different tune had Alabama's dynamic running back, Bo Scarbrough, not gotten hurt in the third quarter? Perhaps. But unlikely.
No matter what the rest of his career holds, and no matter how long I continue to cover sports, Monday night’s win for Deshaun and the Tigers will always be one I remember.
Not necessarily for the Tigers win or the Tide’s loss, but for the achievement of a young man who I remember coaching against in the Gainesville Park and Rec Flag Football League. We all had a feeling that he could be something special back then.
But as I look back, I feel privileged to know that I was watching from the ground floor the beginning’s of the rise of true greatness. Not just as a player, but as a person as well.
Deshaun, know that you will always have at least one Alabama fan on your side. I certainly won’t forget Monday’s game, but I do forgive you.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2017/1/488859/opinion-cfp-finale