Alabama, Clemson commits preview championship game
SAN ANTONIO -- Dexter Lawrence is an early enrollee at Clemson, so he left the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, went home to North Carolina to pick up his belongings and he plans to watch the national championship game from his dorm Monday night.
There might be a more exciting venue for Lawrence to tune in for the Alabama-Clemson finale but the five-star wishes he wasn’t on campus at all. The Wake Forest, N.C., standout wants to be in the game already.
“It’s going to be exciting,” Lawrence said. “I’m going to be wishing I could be there now but I have to wait my chance and work for it.”
Predictably, the Clemson commits here at the Army game said the Tigers would win. Alabama commit Raekwon Davis, who will take other visits, didn’t have much to say about how it would play out but made it clear the Crimson Tide would prevail.
Four-star running back commit Tavien Feaster is happy Clemson is even in this position to play for the title mainly because everything coach Dabo Swinney has told him would happen is coming true.
It only reinforces to the Spartanburg, S.C., star that he made the right choice.
“I think the Tigers come out victorious,” Feaster said. “It’s going to be a hard-fought game but I think Clemson gets it done.
“I’m very happy because everything coach Swinney and the coaching staff has said is coming true for them. They told me hard work pays off and it’s really showing right now because it’s paying off for those guys. Just to know they have a plan set and ready for everybody coming in, it shows they really know what they’re doing.”
Feaster, the top-rated all-purpose back in the 2016 class, had every option imaginable to play college ball. Committed for about 11 months, he believed what the Clemson coaches were telling him, loved the future for the Tigers and wanted to be a part of it.
With how this season has played out, Feaster has no regrets.
“(Swinney) made it feel like we were family,” Feaster said. “That’s what stuck out to me. He told me I had a chance to come in and contribute early, other than just going in and redshirting and getting started my sophomore year. To come in early and make an impact for a team, that was big.”
Lawrence, the second-best defensive tackle and the No. 2 player overall in the class, had similar feelings about what he found when he visited Clemson. Like Feaster, the 6-foot-4, 340-pound star could have gone anywhere. He found the right fit in Clemson.
“It feels great just to know it can happen again and most of the talent there, most of the players are coming back, so I’ll get into the plays and I’m an early enrollee so it will help out a lot,” Lawrence said.
“It’s just how I felt when I went there, how I got along with the players, because that’s who I’ll be dealing with most of the time. It just felt great and felt like the best decision for me.”
As for a prediction, Lawrence didn’t give a final score but said it would be tight. The difference, he believes, is that Clemson’s spread offense will cause problems.
Feaster sees it playing out the same way -- that the Tigers are too fast, have too much speed and too much offense to be contained for four quarters. And it would be huge, in his eyes, that an ACC team beats the SEC power.
“Everybody is thinking it’s an SEC team versus an ACC team and the ACC is basketball-oriented but when you look at it, the ACC is becoming a bigger football conference than people realize,” Feaster said.
“It’s going to be huge because ‘Bama is a very physical team and Clemson is more finesse and speed. That’s where we’re going to beat them with our speed and our receiving corps and just the ground attack we have between (Deshaun) Watson and (Wayne) Gallman is amazing.”
Davis, the lone Alabama pledge at the Army game, didn’t have much to say about Monday night’s outcome but it was succinct and to the point.
“That’s going to be a good game,” Davis said. “You have two great teams but I think ‘Bama is going to pull it out.”
After all the analysis and all the prognostications, maybe Davis said it best.