PLAYSTATION FIESTA BOWL
COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF SEMIFINAL
Clemson vs Ohio State
8:00 PM ET, Saturday, December 28, 2019
State Farm Stadium, Glendale, Arizona
PICK: Clemson -130/Medium
For most of the College Football season, I was expecting at some point to have a play on Ohio State to win it all. I was in Bloomington early in the season when they trounced Indiana. The two teams looked to be from different planets as far as talent. Ohio State looked unstoppable this season at times. However, I think they have played their best football already.
This is a bad time for anyone to have to play Clemson. After a 4-0 start, the Tigers had a scare at North Carolina, escaping with a 21-20 win, posting their lowest yardage total for the season at 331. Since that game, Clemson has gone 8-0 and had at least 516 yards of total offense in all 8 of those wins. They have posted over 600 yards 3 times in that span, including 619 vs Virginia in a 62-17 rout in the ACC Championship game. Clemson scored 50 or more points in 5 of their final 6 games. Since the North Carolina game, Clemson is +15 in net turnovers. Ohio finished in the negative for net turnovers in 2 of their final 3 games.
Clemson’s defense, #1 in the nation, only allowed opponents 200 or more passing yards twice all season. They allowed Virginia 283 pass yards on 48 attempts, many in garbage time playing from behind all day. That was also the only game that Clemson allowed a team 300 yards all season. Ohio State’s defense allowed 396 to Michigan and 432 to Wisconsin in the final 2 games of the season.
Clemson is running for 6.5 ypc this season. Etienne finished with 8.2 ypc on 182 carries. Clemson is averaging 5.3 ypc in the last 4 games while Ohio St is averaging 4.4. Ohio State had their lowest rushing production of the season in the final game vs Wisconsin, 172 yds and 3.7 ypc
The Clemson defense allows opponents 3.0 ypc. They shut down a Boston College run game who averaged 256 yards rush yards per game this season and held them to 97 yds on 44 carries. Ohio State allowed 200 yards rushing in the final game against Wisconsin. They shut Wisconsin down in the first meeting holding the Badgers to 83 yds and 2.2 ypc when Ohio St was playing their best football of the season.
OSU QB Justin Fields is nursing a sprained MCL. He hurt it against Penn St in the third to last game of the year. He had his 2 worst completion % games of the season after that at Michigan and vs Wisconsin. He had only 26 combined rushing yards in those last 2 games after compiling over 400 rushing yards for the season prior to the sprained MCL. Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence has had 6 straight games of 72% completions or better. He has 20 TD/0 Int in that span.
Fields completed 62.2% of passes vs Top 25 teams while Lawrence completed over 70 % of his passes vs Top 25 competition. Fields has an advantage in road game statistics but looking back at the game logs for Lawrence, this stems from the early season slow start for the Clemson offense. He has been dominant later in the season.
Wisconsin and Michigan may have been better teams than what Clemson played at the end of the season but I think Clemson would have dominated both teams. Ohio St was really sluggish to start vs Wisconsin.
I feel all of this points toward Clemson in this game. Earlier this season, this would not have been the case but I think Clemson is playing better on both sides of the ball than any other team right now and I believe they are the team to back in this game.
