Boiling It Down...Alabama v. Clemson

Aug 27th 2008 - Written by: Bryan Morgan

Before every game this year, I thought I’d prepare a little analysis we’ll call “Boiling It Down”, where I try to eliminate all the hype, distractions, and obvious advantages one team has over another….boiling it down to a few critical positions that the winning team must excel at. For the 2008 Alabama-Clemson barnburner scheduled for Saturday night in Atlanta, I believe there are three key positions that will determine the outcome of the game. If Clemson is to win this game, we’ll look up at the end of the game and see that the stat line shows that the Clemson players outplayed their Crimson Tide counterparts. These positions are:

• Quarterback

• Punt/Kick Returns

• Kicker

Marquee Matchup: Quarterback

The Alabama and Clemson starting quarterbacks took different routes to becoming the starting senior quarterbacks for two of the leading college football programs in the South. John Parker Wilson was a heralded recruit out of Hoover, AL, leading that nationally known high school program to the state championship as a junior followed by numerous accolades, including the 2003 Gatorade Alabama Player of the Year and being named to the 2003 Parade All-American team. He played as a freshman in 2005 and started every game for the Crimson Tide in 2006 and 2007. Wilson has shown the periods of brilliance you’d expect out of someone with his pedigree but has shown a tendency to turn the ball over in critical moments in the biggest of games. (His fourth quarter fumble against LSU was probably the turning point in LSU’s national championship season.)

Cullen Harper, meanwhile, started a grand total of two games during his senior year at Sequoyah High outside Atlanta and was almost literally a forgotten quarterback on Clemson’s bench until his junior year. When it was announced he would start for Clemson at the beginning of 2007, anyone outside the Harper family assumed this would be to give freshman phenom Willy Korn time to acclimate himself with the college game. Something happened on the way, however…it turns out that Cullen Harper looked pretty good in that first start….and the second…and the sixth. By the eighth game of 2008, Willy Korn was looking at a redshirt year and whispers began to grow that Harper was a legitimate All-ACC candidate, putting up better numbers than future #1 draft pick Matt Ryan of Boston College. A shoulder injury against Boston College limited Harper’s abilities for the latter end of 2007 but a 100% healthy Harper is now ready to take the field this Saturday.

To compare these two quarterbacks, I thought we’d take a look at their statistics in their six biggest games from 2007 plus their bowl game (weeding out the games against the weakest opponents is a better basis for comparisons, in my opinion). For Harper, this would be the following: Florida State(W), Georgia Tech (L), Virginia Tech (L), Wake Forest (W), Boston College (L), South Carolina (W), and Auburn (L).

In these seven big games in which the Tigers went 3-4, Harper’s combined and average statistics were as follows:

Team	Comp	Att	Yds	Tds	Int
Florida State	14	24	160	2	0
Georgia Tech	17	39	194	0	1
Virginia Tech	38	66	372	2	2
Wake Forest	27	35	266	3	0
Boston College	26	40	226	0	1
South Carolina	28	38	229	1	1
Auburn	14	33	104	0	0
AVERAGE:	23.4	39.3	221.6	1.1	0.7

From looking at the numbers in those games, Harper threw a lot of passes for about a 60% completion percentage with a pedestrian 1.6 TD/INT ratio at a paltry 5.64 yards per attempt.

This is the picture of a quarterback who completes lots of short safe passes between the 20’s with a very low payoff in the endzone. In addition, a quick look at the overall NCAA 2007 Passing Efficiency Rankings also shows that while Harper was ranked highly (#22), he had one of the bottom five lowest yards-per-attempt numbers of any QB in the Top 35….showing that his efficiency might be attributable to safe, short routes (bubble screen, anyone?). This underscores the statistics above. What 2007 showed us was this: Harper and the dazzling array of offensive weapons surrounding him can absolutely light up a lesser opponent but when faced with very good to extremely good defenses, his numbers erode quickly. Whether it is play calling, his abilities, or some combination of both, Clemson’s “high octane” passing offense becomes a shell of itself in big crunch-time games. Conservative results such as these combined with a solid running game and a good defense may be enough to defeat a solid Crimson Tide team, but it flies in the face of an offseason of discussion of sub 4.1 40 times, playmakers, and first round NFL Draft picks…..we will see if Harper can lead an offense that can back up this incredible amount of hype.

John Parker Wilson’s numbers are equally interesting. By my admittedly arbitrary decision-making process, Alabama’s 7 biggest games in 2007 were the following: Georgia(L), Florida State(L), Tennessee(W), LSU(L), Mississippi State(L), Auburn(L), and Colorado(W).

Bama’s record in these seven games was 2-5 and Wilson’s stats in these games were as follows:

Team	Comp	Att	Yds	TDs	Int
Georgia	17	35	185	0	0
Florida State	28	53	240	2	0
Tennessee	32	46	363	3	0
LSU	14	40	234	3	1
Mississippi State	16	34	121	2	2
Auburn	12	26	113	0	1
Colorado	19	32	256	3	1
AVERAGE	19.7	38.0	216.0	1.9	0.7

Wilson clocks in at #92 on the NCAA 2007 pass efficiency rankings but in what I’m terming the “games that matter”, he’s eerily similar to Harper with a nearly identically conservative 5.68 yards per attempt, a bordering-on-poor completion percentage (51.9%), but a good 2.6 TD-to-interception ratio. Interestingly, it is Wilson, not Harper, who has shown to get the football into the endzone, putting up multiple touchdowns on some of the top defenses in the country last year, nearly doubling Harper’s TD output in his “games that matter”.

As the saying goes, numbers don’t lie. In the toughest of games and environments in 2007, Harper and Wilson showed themselves to be nearly identical with Harper perhaps showing an edge in accuracy while Wilson showing himself to be more proficient at getting his team into the endzone through the air. Given Clemson’s challenges with field goal kicking (keep reading for more on that), Harper will need to noticeably improve in this area if the Tigers are to get to the next level.

Punt/Kick Returns

There’s possibly no other players in the country Clemson fans would rather have returning kicks and punts than Jacoby Ford and C.J. Spiller. It’s not often that a team is blessed to have two athletes as talented as these, where it can literally be said that they cannot be caught. Alabama, however, happens to have an identical weapon in Javier Arenas. Arenas has run back three punts or kickoffs for touchdowns in his two-year career and his numbers compare very favorably to either Spiller’s or Ford’s (although if you combine the two’s numbers over their two-year careers, there’s really noone in the country who can compare).

It boils down to this: this could be a game played to a near draw that is decided by what most fans treat as an afterthought: a kickoff or punt return. Arenas is ready to show the world his cornerback skills but his biggest impact in the game will most probably be as a return man. Spiller and Ford really need no more hype in this space; if they combine to play this position to a win on Saturday night, it may be the push that Clemson needs to take home the win.

Kicker

Comparing kickers is a bit like comparing golfers. While things like technique, speed, stamina, and the hard-to-define things such as “guts” matter at virtually every other position on the football field, kickers are judged primarily by one thing: statistics. It’s the only position on the field where we discuss amorphous topics such as “hang time”, “release point”, or “freeze timeouts”. If the game were decided solely based on statistics, however, Clemson would be in big trouble. Alabama’s Leigh Tiffin ranked #3 nationally in field goals per game in 2007 and holds a number of Alabama scoring records. In his career he is 48 of 49 in extra points 33 of 47 in field goal attempts (making more than 70% of his field goals over his career).

On the other side, Clemson’s Mark Buchholz is a perfect 48-48 in extra points but has made field goals at only a 61% clip (22 out of 36 in 2007). He’s known to the national media as the guy who moonlighted between Clemson’s football and soccer teams last fall but may be better remembered to Clemson fans as the guy who missed key kicks in close losses to Georgia Tech, Boston College, and Auburn….yes, such is the life of a kicker. Just looking at the statistics, it looks like Buchholz gets a lot more work than Tiffin, meaning that Clemson’s offense either fails to score TDs on more opportunities in the red zone area than Alabama or simply that they’re at least better at getting into scoring position than Alabama. Whatever the answer, it boils down to this: Buchholz will be counted on by Clemson to convert on opportunities within 45 yards throughout this year…..how he fares on these opportunities may single-handedly determine the outcome of the overall season.

And, Finally…A Prediction

Clemson jumps on Alabama early, staking a 10-0 or 14-0 lead only to see the Tide climb back into it with a combination of ball control offense, a stiffening defense, and conservative play-calling on the part of Tommy Bowden’s Tiger coaching staff. The game will be very close entering the fourth quarter but the Tigers score late, preserving a 24-17 win. In next week’s “Boiling It Down” feature, we’ll take a quick look back at the Alabama game and see how the Tigers fared at these highlighted positions. Have a great weekend and Go Tigers!

Bryan Morgan (bdmorgan@gmail.com) is a graduate of Clemson University (BS Electrical Engineering, 1991) and a software architect for a major technology company. He is currently preparing to watch football for the next five glorious months.

 

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