Pay attention Longhorn fans. Texas is on a collision course with these football teams. Using simple gridiron science and a Ouija board, I've identified which half dozen teams are the actual 2025 contenders for The College Football Quickening.
Pay attention Longhorn fans. Texas is on a collision course with these football teams.
Using simple gridiron science and a Ouija board, I’ve identified which half dozen teams are the actual 2025 contenders for The College Football Quickening.
Penn State’s extremely high floor has already been covered in my first installment.
How about ceiling?
CLEMSON
What? The 2024 four loss Clemson Tigers? 0-3 against the SEC? Didn’t they barely squeak by Pittsburgh?
Yes, Climpson.
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I was early on Clemson (like the day after their playoff loss to the Longhorns) and now I’m watching the betting markets and media catch up, six months later. Might it all be trendy groupthink?
Remember back when Clemson cracked the SEC title cartel in 2016 and 2018 with great mobile QB play, elite DL talent that controlled the line of scrimmage, terrifying wide receivers, and a coach with a knack for getting the Tigers to play up in big games?
That sounds a lot like 2025 Clemson.
They return 16 starters and 229 total starts from a youthful 2024 squad. They return 80% of their total production. The college football mean is 53%. This offseason they even experimented with a tool called the portal after Dabo prayed on it and realized that it wasn’t the gateway to Gehenna.
More important than Dabo’s dabbling was ditching defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin, who was engaged in coaching malpractice. When I scouted Clemson last year for the playoff game in Austin, it took about five minutes to understand that Goodwin was the culprit in a very talented defense (Woods, Parker, Terrell, Brown) underachieving.
They brought in veteran DC Tom Allen from Penn State and he’ll teach some high level concepts like pad level, tackling, outside zone is a legal offensive play, that your best DT shouldn’t play edge, and other such mystical arts. Tom Allen is a bigger upgrade over Wes Goodwin than Jim Knowles was over Tom Allen at Penn State. An A replaced a B and the B replaced a D.
I thought you were Mr There Are Only Two Conferences That Matter Guy? Correct. There are only two conferences that matter. You forgot the caveat. There are also a small handful of one-off teams. All trying to get into the Two Conferences That Matter. Which demonstrates their Very Matterness. Clemson is one of them.
Aww, shut up about Notre Dame.
In the current media environment of talking head dolts and a playoff committee that has qualifications like “once wrote about tennis and now teaches at Montclair State” and “mediocre glad-handing athletics bureaucrat”, dominating the ACC after a big opener against a SEC opponent plays very much in their favor.
Loss column bias is real and the hooplehead finds Clemson pounding Wake Forest 48-10 far more compelling than Texas beating Arkansas 35-17. They don’t want to hear about power rankings, schedule strength, or that the Pigs are better than the Deacons, unless it serves some larger talking point. Arkansas is 5-7. Wake is 4-8. Same team, basically, right?
Like Penn State, if things break right for Clemson, this is your #1 playoff seed.
But what if they lose to LSU at home in their opener? They’re cooked!
Oh, look it’s someone who has never watched a college football season unfold. The Clemson Early Setback But Now Playing Good Ball Narrative is primed and ready. In that opener, Clemson’s backup right guard had eczema, but since being treated for it, Clemson is on a five game winning streak and no one is playing better football! Look what they did to Boston College. PINSTRIPE BOWL PARTICIPANT BOSTON COLLEGE.
And if they beat LSU…
I did Clemson a disservice by leading with conference weakness and perception.
They could be really good. Clemson currently projects to have four first rounders in the 2026 NFL Draft. Beyond that star power, they should have between 10-13 guys drafted overall. Clemson is peaking. And teams that are peaking with real talent and seniority don’t improve marginally.
QB Cade Klubnik has 28 career starts (with 37 game appearances) and he turned it around last year. Whatever your opinion about his ultimate upside, he is an elusive, accurate, live-armed, deeply experienced college QB. Don’t forget that he has wheels. In a playoff scenario, he’s punishing man or drop coverages.
The Clemson OL returns 4 starters and most of them are 5th and 6th year players. All are upperclassmen. Their best is the left tackle, Blake Miller.
Their top pass catchers – Wesco, Moore, Williams – are eclipsed only by Ohio State’s options and they landed an intriguing #4 in the portal, SE Missouri State’s Tristan Smith. Two of their star WRs were true freshmen last year.
The team is loaded and their schedule is conveniently book ended by LSU/South Carolina, with a somewhat tricky road spot at Louisville. Their ACC title game opponent could very well be a mediocrity, particularly if Miami chokes again. And even if they don’t.
It’s hard to find a team with more outs to get into the playoff.
So what’s the best anti-Clemson argument?
Dabo’s failure to churn the roster over the last three years means that they have frontline talent, but poor depth. Some of their 2nd teamers looked like they shouldn’t be playing high major football. I don’t have enough insight into the program to know if guys returning from injury, organic development, and modest portal work brought them up to par here.
I’m fairly certain that they can’t endure injuries and sustain the way that Texas, Notre Dame and Ohio State did last year.
Their running back concerns are probably overblown. I find it difficult to believe that some carbon-based life form can’t gain yards with their options outside, Klubnik’s backside constraint, and their best OL in several years.
Defensively, this unit has elite talent at all of the right spots, but they have to be sound. Watch the Texas and Louisville games from last year. It’s Clemson defenders getting manhandled with bad pad level, I’m-just-guessing stunts, a lack of physicality. That bullshit has to stop.
Clemson has a combo of assets that seem to play well in the modern playoff era: a seasoned coach who doesn’t wilt in big games, a very talented team with a highly favorable schedule, clear offseason solutions for last year’s problems, and their most challenging games conveniently spaced out allowing for max prep and wrinkle reveals.
I’ve just guaranteed that LSU finally wins an opener, haven’t I?
Will the Longhorns make the Top Six? You should already know that.
Category: General Sports
