TAMPA, Fla. — Damned if he wasn’t open. Wide open. There had been six seconds left in this heart-stopping College Football Playoff national championship game when Clemson’s Deshaun Watson took the snap; he needed to make sure this play took place quickly, in case the Tigers couldn’t cover the 2 yards separating them and the end zone.
Separating them and the mountaintop.
“It was calm in the huddle,” the Clemson quarterback would say. “No one was panicked.”
He had one message for everyone.
“Let’s be legendary,” he said. “Let’s be great.”
So Watson took the snap, and he rolled right, and it must have felt to every single Clemson fan everywhere in the world like the seconds were melting off the clock in double time. Watson had to find someone fast, or else dump the ball, make sure there would at least be time for a game-tying field-goal attempt.
Let’s go! Let’s go-let’s go-let’s go! Letsgoletsgoletsgo …
And then there he was, as if touched by magic, charmed by the moment: Hunter Renfrow, already one touchdown to his credit, a step across the goal line, his arms raised. That was all it took for Watson. He flipped it to Renfrow. Renfrow squeezed it. There was one second left in the game.
And magic filled the end zone at Raymond James Stadium.
“I told ’em tonight,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney would exclaim, “I told ’em that the difference in this game was going to be love they had for each other. I told them to let the light they have inside of them be brighter than the light shining on them. If they focused on that they’d be OK.”
It turned out OK. It turned out to be a 35-31 victory for the Tigers, payback for the 45-40 shootout that had gone Alabama’s way in this game last year. It was accomplished against the remarkable machine that is Alabama football, searching for its 17th national championship (and sixth under Nick Saban).
Consider this: Before Monday night, Saban teams at Alabama were 97-0 in games in which they took a double-digit lead into the fourth quarter. The Tide led 24-14 after three quarters in this game, and it was a wonder it was that close after they’d dominated Clemson on both sides of the ball for so much of the first half.
The Tide led despite a freshman quarterback, Jalen Hurts, who never could get his arm untracked, who spent most of the night looking puzzled some downs, overwhelmed others, mostly finding comfort handing the ball to Bo Scarbrough and getting the heck out of the way.
But when Scarbrough went down early in the fourth, it was Hurts who delivered what certainly looked like it would be the crowning moment for the Tide: A 30-yard run with 2 minutes and 7 seconds left in the game. At that moment, it seemed that Clemson would, for a second time in as many years, learn the hard lesson so many before them would: When the Saban Tide isn’t stomping your hopes, it’s breaking your heart.
“We were in position,” Saban would say later, solemnly. “But we just couldn’t finish it.”
That was the real surprise, even before the final play in the final second. Clemson scored twice to turn 24-14 down into 28-24 up, the go-ahead score a dive by running back Wayne Gallman just past the strike of midnight that had sent everyone wearing purple and orange — those among the 74,512 in the stadium, those back home in South Carolina, and the alums scattered throughout the country — into a crazy frenzy. The Tigers were going to beat the Tide!
And then they weren’t.
And then they were here, after nine frantic plays and 66 yards that had pushed the Tigers from their own 32 to the Bama 2. They were here, there were six seconds left, there was a roar at the snap and then the beautiful picture of Hunter Renfrow, open. Wide open.
“They made the plays and we didn’t,” Saban said. “We could have done some things better. I’m just sorry for our guys that we didn’t.”
Saban, so empirical in victory, was resplendent in defeat, too. At the final gun, Swinney was stormed by fans, by players, by state troopers, by everyone; it does seem everyone likes Dabo Swinney. But Saban, stinging from the loss, waited for Swinney to make it to midfield. Swinney played and coached at Alabama.
“And he’s a friend,” Saban said. When Swinney finally arrived, they embraced, but only for a second. The fans were delirious. The field was chaotic. Damned if they hadn’t slain the mighty Alabama elephant. Damned if they hadn’t gotten this done.
Damn.