College Football Playoffs 2015: Early Questions Going into National Championship
Just as everyone predicted, Florida State lost to Oregon by almost 40 points, and Ohio State beat Alabama. Wait, what?
This college football season has been a roller-coaster ride from the very beginning, so it's appropriate that the final few stages are just as crazy.
The Buckeyes and Ducks will meet on January 12 for the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship. In terms of aesthetics, neutral fans couldn't have asked for a better matchup.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
The national championship is still another 10 days away, so there's plenty of time to weigh the positives and negatives of both teams before making an opinion one way or the other.
Although it's very early, these are two of the bigger questions stemming from Thursday's semifinals.
Did Florida State's Second-Half Collapse Mask Potential Issues for Oregon?
Even though Florida State entered the playoff unbeaten, the Seminoles had plenty of critics. They made it a habit of falling behind in the first half before storming back in the second. FSU could get away with that against Miami, North Carolina State, Clemson and Louisville but not against a team the quality of Oregon.
The final score flatters the Ducks somewhat, but there's no question Florida State was exposed as a team not worthy of Top Four status. Almost all of the doubts about it proved warranted.
Dirk Chatelain of the Omaha World-Herald didn't fault the committee for putting the 'Noles in but admitted that the difference between the two teams was a damning indictment of the defending national champs:
ESPN Stats & Info provided the graph depicting each team's win probability throughout the game. Notice the uptick in Oregon's favor in the second half:
It's hard to find much with which to knock Oregon. The Pac-12 champion played a nearly flawless game.
With that said, what will likely get lost is that the Ducks allowed 528 total yards, including 348 through the air from Winston. Winston also completed 64.4 percent of his passes, only one percentage point below his average this year. All things considered, the sophomore quarterback really wasn't all that bad.
The Ducks benefited greatly from one of the most turnover-prone teams in the country, too. The Seminoles gave the ball back to their opponents 27 times entering the game, placing them 109th in the country. They turned it over five times Thursday, which all came in a six-drive span.
"We beat ourselves," Winston said after the game, per The Associated Press (via ESPN.com). "We were never stopped at all."
That's stretching the truth a bit, but before FSU's second-half meltdown, it had one drive end at the 1-yard line. Another drive ended via a missed 54-yard field goal by Roberto Aguayo, who was a perfect four-of-four from 50-plus yards in his career entering the game and had a career long of 53 yards. Two of Florida State's second-half fumbles came in Oregon territory, and a third was at the 50-yard line.
In a way, you can see what Winston's trying to say. That's a lot of points left on the board. Seemingly all of the Seminoles' good fortune dried up, and everything went horribly wrong for them.
Oregon was obviously the deserving team and made the most of every turnover.
The Ducks aren't going to get this lucky again, though. They've got to be much better defensively and not rely so heavily on Ohio State making mistakes.
Which Ohio State Shows Up?
Offensively, the Buckeyes stalled after Devin Smith's 47-yard touchdown to start the second half. Their next four drives all ended in punts, with Ohio State gaining a combined 25 yards. Before Ezekiel Elliott's 85-yard TD run with three minutes and 24 seconds left in the game, the Bucks had minus-two yards for the fourth quarter, per ESPN Stats & Info:
Ohio State left the door open for Alabama to come back and potentially win. The Crimson Tide merely needed to capitalize. The reasons they didn't were manifold. Some were of Ohio State's doing, and others were the Tide simply shooting themselves in the foot.
One of the most quizzical aspects of the game was Alabama's aversion to handing the ball off to Derrick Henry. The sophomore running back was having a ton of success against the Buckeyes and finished averaging 7.3 yards a carry.
Henry's one of those running backs whose punishing style is especially effective late in the game, when the opposing defense grows more and more tired. According to D.C. Reeves of the The Tuscaloosa News, he'd averaged nearly eight yards a carry in the final quarter against SEC teams throughout his career:
Instead, for whatever reason, the Tide kept throwing the football. Who knows what Lane Kiffin's endgame was?
And Alabama still had a chance to tie the game in a position not dissimilar to the one in which the Tide tied the game against LSU before winning in overtime:
While the Buckeyes offense struggled for much of the third and fourth quarters, the defense didn't, intercepting Blake Sims three times. The first INT went for a touchdown, and another came when Alabama had a 1st-and-10 on the OSU 23-yard line.
Give credit where credit is due: Ohio State was one of the few teams to really make Sims look like a first-year starter.
Between those impactful turnovers and Alabama's questionable play-calling, Ohio State didn't find itself in a ton of trouble late in the game.
Much like with Oregon, you have to wonder if the Buckeyes' mistakes/issues will become more acute when the national championship rolls around. The Ducks won't fall into the same trap of not giving the ball to one of their best players, and they've turned the ball over eight times all year. Marcus Mariota is not going to make the same errors that Sims did.
Ohio State is also playing with a third-string quarterback. Cardale Jones didn't play poorly, but he didn't play great either, going 18-of-35 passing for 243 yards, a touchdown and an interception. He also had a few of those moments where he tried to do too much and ended up hurting the team, like so many inexperienced QBs before.
With the way that the Oregon offense torched Florida State, the Buckeyes can't afford to stumble for long stretches of the game. But if they play like they did in the first half, the Ducks could be in some serious trouble.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
