re: Clemson is sure glad OJ Howard is at the combine

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really? Most Bama fans thought that there was at least a decent chance that we would not win. There wasn't that much unpredictability to it.

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Honestly, most of us didn't expect to get to the title game because we had a true freshman QB. When we went through the season undefeated, we understood that it had a lot to do with the SEC being a bit down in comparison to recent years.

When we had trouble scoring decent points against Washington, a lot of us figured we'd have to play a dang near perfect game against Clemson defensively to win. A lot of us did not expect to score 30+ on Clemson if we couldn't score over 24 on Washington despite keeping their offense off the field quite a bit. Our young QB was showing his age by the time the post season hit.

Doesn't mean I automatically assumed we would lose either, but simply that I figured that if Clemson had the same success (or even close to it) that they had last year against our defense, we would lose. Losing EJ eliminated both our advantage in the return game, and put what was best an equal footing with Clemson's WRs to a disadvantage.

There are plenty of things we should have done, but it doesn't mean that Clemson would have lost if we did. It just means that the game would have had a different flow.