GLENDALE, Ariz. — He had yet to lose a college football game. No, wait, check that: In 24 prior games as a starter for the Clemson Tigers, Trevor Lawrence had yet to even take a snap trailing in a college football game. That is how dominant Clemson has been these past two spotless seasons. That is how good Lawrence has been.
As he trotted onto the State Farm Stadium turf, though, 187 seconds from the final gun of this Fiesta Bowl playoff semifinal, Lawrence looked at the scoreboard and saw his whole world reduced to a couple of numbers: the “23” next to Ohio State. The “21” next to Clemson. He had 187 seconds to change that, 187 seconds to make things right in the Clemson world again.
He needed only 78 of them.
“People said we hadn’t been tested,” Lawrence would say later. “We were tested tonight.”
And then: a smile that stretched from here to the Utah state line, a smile that reminded you that, while it feels like we’ve been watching Trevor Lawrence play football for a decade, he is still all of 20 years old.
“We passed the test.”
They did that. They have won 29 games in a row, and it took 29 points to give them an opportunity to make it 30, and you have to know that Dabo Swinney is going to seize upon the symbolism between now and Jan. 13 in New Orleans. And why not? Lawrence needed only four plays, needed only 78 seconds to secure this 29-23 victory, to turn the bleakness of winter into two more weeks of football.
By the time the Tigers take the field at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome to face that other band of snarling cats from LSU — more on them later — it will be 741 days since they last lost a football game. You store up a lot of muscle memory across 741 days, across two-plus years.
Trevor LawrenceGetty Images“Without heart,” Swinney said, “none of this would be possible. Nobody lost sight of what we wanted to do.”
Even Buckeyes fans who nod in agreement with Swinney’s ode to character might want to add this morning that getting a friendly whistle or two — and a few friendly calls from the replay booth — are just as helpful. Ohio State coach Ryan Day was careful not to place too much emphasis on the two touchdowns his team lost on review — one that seemed legit, one that looked a little shaky.
“There were some calls on the field that were overturned,” he said with as much diplomacy as he could muster. “Big plays that didn’t go our way. I have a wide range of emotions about that.”
Still, Day understood as well as anyone else that his team had so many chances. They led 16-0 and that easily could’ve been 24-0 if they didn’t keep slipping on banana peels in the red zone. Even after seeing Clemson take a 21-16 lead, they fought back to sneak in front 23-21 (with Ryan making a curious decision not to go for two), and then pinned Clemson on its own 6-yard line up two with 187 seconds to go.
And then, Lawrence — already the owner of a TD pass and a glorious 67-yard scoring run on the night — went to work: 11 yards to Justyn Ross. Eleven yards of his own on a run. Thirty-eight yards to Amari Rodgers. And then 34 more to Travis Etienne. Seventy-eight seconds. Ninety-four yards.
“Whatever it takes to win,” Lawrence would say as the Clemson portion of the 71,330 chanted his name. “I’m not really a runner, but I told our defense ‘I’ll lay it all out here for y’all here if you get us the ball.’ ”
These Tigers know what awaits them in New Orleans in 15 days, LSU getting to play a virtual home game 80 miles to the southeast of campus. Not that it needs the extra help; the purple Tigers did hang a 63-28 bludgeoning on Oklahoma earlier Saturday, looking unbeatable on both sides of the ball, their Heisman-winning quarterback, Joe Burrow, accounting for seven TDs with his arm and another with his legs.
Still, these Tigers, these orange Tigers, also know a few things: that 29-game winning streak for one. And the fact that the national championship is in their possession until someone drags it out of their hands. One thing we all learned Saturday: Clemson isn’t giving it away without a scrap.
Swinney: “They didn’t do anything tonight I didn’t already know. I tell ’em, ‘They can prepare for what we do but not who we are.’ To win 29 in a row, ya gotta have something to ya.”
These Tigers do. So do those Tigers. New Orleans can’t get here fast enough.
