Three Thoughts - Texas Takes Out Clemson
It is all about owning line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball right now for Horns.
Three Thoughts is our signature way to summarize a noteworthy game we want to cover during the 2024 college football season at #Sturmstack. We grab one game most weekends – featuring Texas or Texas A&M – and bringing our notebook to see what jumps out at us in a brief recap that we do in memory of the man who did this first before his untimely demise, the late Grant Wahl…
Presented without an editor, so please forgive the grammar.
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We are unlikely to ever forget the first time college football moved to a full playoff. It was clunky and fairly non-sensical. It will certainly invite a number of adjustments in the years to follow, but the 2024 season will stand alone as the first time that they did what we all wanted in the 1980’s. They tried to replicate a real NFL playoff where teams settled things on the field rather than what college football always did which was to settle things in committee meetings and tv specials.
Again, it is a far from perfect format and we all have plenty of notes, but we have now seen four completely real college football playoff games in one weekend of must-see television on the weekend before Christmas.
It was wonderful in many ways, but dramatic football was barely played at all. There appeared to be several mismatches, and in general, they were all mismatches played at the site of the favorite, which only serves to grow the mismatches.
Indiana, SMU, and Tennessee were all sent home without even mounting 2nd half threats. SMU, in particular, is much better than it showed on this Saturday at Penn State, but it was a bad time for Kevin Jennings to play his worst game of the year. QB play isn’t everything, unless he throws two pick-6’s and three overall while being sacked over and over again. Then, it actually is everything.
But, this game in Austin, did seem like it was a closer match than the other three. Clemson did have enough roster quality that Texas would need to play well to avoid any pitfalls and the match-makers did them no real favors (in this round – Arizona State might be a favor). They would certainly need to bring their physicality to push Clemson out of their way and they did just that.
The Longhorns took a very big halftime lead, 28-10, and then were able to run the rock all day long as they dismissed the Tigers and the ACC from the college football playoffs with a 38-24 win on Saturday in front of 101,150 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
These are My Three Thoughts:
– Texas is a very big and physical team that must never forget that fact. Yes, there are other ways to beat opponents, but the one in which they seem to be the best version of themselves is when they decide to get into a contest of bully-ball. This starts with winning at the line of scrimmage and then delivering physicality all over the field. When Texas plays with that level of conviction and venom, they look very much like a national title team. The vulnerability lies in situations where they seek another path – or run into Georgia who might be the exception this rule.