Beat writer breakdown: An inside look at Clemson, LSU and the matchups that could decide the national championship (2024)

The countdown to New Orleans is on for Monday night’s national championship game (8 ET on ESPN), and if there’s one thing that’s certain around Clemson these days, it’s this:

“You prepare like you do for a road game,” Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence said. “We’ll have a good amount of fans there because we have really good fans, but it’s just hard. That’s in (LSU’s) backyard.”

Indeed, Lawrence will take center stage next week at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, which is only about 90 minutes down Interstate 10 from LSU’s Tiger Stadium. Clemson safety Tanner Muse said it would be similar to Clemson hypothetically playing a national title game in nearby Greenville, S.C. But Dabo Swinney’s Tigers have been elite on the road for two years. They have not lost a game since the 2018 Sugar Bowl — in their most recent trip to New Orleans.

“We need to take advantage,” LSU coach Ed Orgeron said. “We need to take advantage of the home crowd. We need to take advantage of playing at home. And we need to play our best football to beat Clemson.”

As the two teams finish up game plans this week before heading Friday to New Orleans, the main attraction will be the quarterback battle.

Joe Burrow and Lawrence are the two best college quarterbacks in the country, with each of their semifinal performances backing that up. Burrow, the Heisman Trophy winner, threw for seven touchdowns in a 63-28 blowout of Oklahoma. Lawrence rushed for a career-high 107 yards against Ohio State, which included the longest run of his career: a 67-yard touchdown.

To break it all down, The Athletic’s Brody Miller and Grace Raynor are here. Brody has been covering LSU since 2018, while Grace has covered Clemson since the Tigers’ first national championship under Swinney in the 2016 season.

Grace Raynor: We know this is set up to be a quarterback showdown for the ages, but of all the things I heard at Clemson’s in-house media day this week, it was Muse’s take on these two that stood out the most.

He has seen Lawrence every day in practice for two seasons. He’s been watching Burrow’s tendencies on film with defensive coordinator Brent Venables for hours.

“There’s no comparison,” he said. “I think they just do so much different stuff. I think people compare them because of how good they both are, but there is no comparison.”

The two quarterbacks met for the first time and spent some time together over the summer at the Manning Passing Academy. Lawrence roomed with Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm, but he has seen Burrow play and has walked away impressed every time.

While Burrow has the advantage in his passing numbers (372 yards per game to Lawrence’s 245.1), I think Lawrence has the edge in using his legs. The Clemson quarterback is averaging 36.7 yards on the ground per game to Burrow’s 22.2. Lawrence credited Burrow’s mobility Monday, but I would think taking Lawrence into account as a runner is going to be a priority for LSU’s defense.

Brody Miller: Lawrence is a great runner, but Burrow is a pretty elite runner, too. For his protection, LSU just very consciously doesn’t run him unless absolutely needed. He has 519 (sack-adjusted) rushing yards for 6.8 yards per carry. He’s a 6-foot-4, 220-pound bulldozer with great speed.

LSU picks rare spots to commit to running him. I’d point to his 100 rushing yards at Texas A&M in 2018, or when he ran for 96 yards on nine carries when LSU needed him to beat Alabama. Plus, he’s as good as a pocket mover and scrambler as I’ve seen in a long time, shaking off sacks against Alabama, Georgia and Oklahoma.

I probably agree Lawrence has the slight edge overall as a runner, but I just wanted to toss some credit to how good Burrow is there.

But there’s no doubt LSU is accounting for Lawrence as a runner. They’re actually using slot receiver Jontre Kirklin (a former high school quarterback) as the scout team Trevor Lawrence.

“Before this game, I probably would have (underestimated) Lawrence’s running,” Orgeron said last week. “But not after I saw him. He’s a big cat that can run, especially when he gets out in space. He won’t be underestimated with us.”

It will be interesting to see how LSU tries to contain Lawrence without sacrificing too much in pass defense. It tried to “cage rush” Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger to contain him, but that actually made life easier for him with more time. I think it just tries to go with a base four-man rush and two high safeties. Clemson is too balanced to overcommit anywhere.

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The next question is how Clemson attempts to contain Burrow. When opponents try to send pressure, he just gets the ball out quickly. When they try to drop bodies into coverage, he takes his time and finds somebody downfield. I’m not sure what the best move is.

Grace: That’s the $1 million question if you’re Clemson. And it’s an imperative one. The Tigers have seen no one like him all season, with the two best quarterbacks they’ve faced being Justin Fields at Ohio State and Sam Howell at North Carolina. Clemson cannot win if it can’t contain Burrow, and there’s no other way around that. In that regard, early enrollee DJ Uiagalelei, who is playing Burrow on the scout team this week, has a massive first job at Clemson.

Before big matchups like these, I’m always trying to get into Venables’ head because, as we know, he just thinks differently than the normal person. The wheels are always turning. What he said about LSU’s offense in the immediate aftermath of the Fiesta Bowl showed just how much respect he has for Burrow and this historic unit.

“Oh, now you get to go play LSU. Oh, great,” he said minutes after Clemson’s semifinal. “We’re going into the lion’s den, but whatever, man.”

All season long, Clemson has felt like the strength of its defense has been a veteran back seven, and Burrow is going to put that to the test. The best passing offenses Clemson saw all year were those of Wake Forest (ranked No. 24) and North Carolina (No. 25). But Wake Forest averaged 288.3 passing yards per game and North Carolina averaged 285.8. Burrow threw for 403 yards in the first half (!!!) against Oklahoma and finished those first 30 minutes with seven touchdowns. There’s a reason he has won so many awards, and there’s a reason the Heisman voting was a landslide this year.

After Clemson went down 16-0 to Ohio State, one of the adjustments defensively was the decision to roll out more of its odd front. Venables’ move toward more three down linemen this season has paid off well for Clemson, and I’m curious to see if that’s the plan for LSU, too.

I also found it funny earlier this season when LSU and Alabama played and Venables was asked about it. He said he felt bad for the defensive coordinators. Then he shared with us this little game of sorts he likes to play with himself: Sometimes, when he’s watching his own film, he’ll have another game on in the background. He likes to do this thing where he’ll look at that film and immediately force himself on the spot to decide what he’d call in that situation if he was the defensive coordinator. Venables isn’t rattled often, but I feel comfortable in my estimation that Burrow has given him headaches in this gap between games.

Muse had some issues with Virginia quarterback Bryce Perkins in Clemson’s ACC Championship Game and was subsequently benched, which is something to watch. Clemson is in trouble if it lets Burrow have his way early. The key to the Ohio State game defensively was Clemson’s stout red-zone defense. LSU’s red-zone offense scores 97.1 percent of the time, and 78.6 percent of that success is in the form of touchdowns. Scary business.

Brody: That’s very interesting about the red-zone defense, though. A huge part of Auburn keeping that game 23-20 wasn’t that it was an even game. It was that Auburn did a good job of slowing the game down, forcing LSU into third downs and getting red-zone stops to make LSU settle for field goals. It’s how a 508-yard outing resulted in just 23 points. I’ve had to accept that nobody is going to stop LSU overall. You just have to get the occasional stop to keep it interesting.

What fascinates me most about this matchup is the Venables vs. Burrow dynamic. It’s become a running joke that LSU says it doesn’t know why it watches film, because every week the top defenses in the country come out and try something they’ve never shown before (e.g., Auburn and Georgia with their 3-1-7 defenses). But Burrow, Joe Brady and Steve Ensminger have been so skilled at adapting to whatever the defense shows. Burrow’s processing ability is off the charts, so he adjusts quickly and goes where the defense isn’t. Well, Venables is better than anybody at constantly keeping offenses on their toes and mixing it up. Can he be the first to truly ruffle Burrow?

On the other side of the ball, Clemson is the most balanced offense that LSU has faced. Much has certainly been written about the ups and downs of this LSU defense, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s proven to be a pretty good — not great — defense. But if you look at the two games LSU truly got beat defensively (excluding the Ole Miss game, which was a lot of injuries, lack of focus and nonsense), they were Alabama and Texas when LSU faced truly good quarterbacks. Lawrence might be the best of them all. Only Alabama was as balanced at quarterback, running back, receiver and offensive line.

Unlike Venables, LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda keeps his defense somewhat simple. He plays a lot of Tite front Cover 4 and Under front Cover 1 on first and second down, then on third down he uses his Cheetah dime front (1 DL, 5 LB, 5 DB) with creative pass-rush stunts. My guess would be he plays Clemson similarly to how he played Alabama: Press coverage of Stingley/Fulton on Ross/Higgins and two high safeties preventing big plays. But does that open things up for Travis Etienne and that fantastic run game? Maybe Aranda mixes it up more.

How do you foresee Clemson attacking LSU?

Grace: You’re right that Clemson has the most balanced offense LSU has seen, and that’s been the case for all of Clemson’s opponents. I’m curious to see how Etienne, in particular, plays. This is a guy who is 7 yards away from breaking Clemson’s school record for career rushing yardage. I could see him breaking that on the first play of the game, if we’re being honest. He’s had some recent success in catching the ball, too, which was a huge wrinkle Ohio State had to account for. I’m curious to see if Clemson continues to get him more involved in the passing game, and I’m also curious to see Lawrence’s mobility again. Because he has such a big arm, some of Lawrence’s most impressive throws are when he scrambles and creates something for himself. He has a way of placing the ball where only his receivers can snag it, and I expect Tee Higgins to be a much bigger part of this game than he was against the Buckeyes, when he was hurt for parts of the first half.

Braden Galloway, the tight end suspended for a calendar year for testing positive for the banned substance ostarine, is also now back in the fold. I want to see if Clemson has something up its sleeve there. His contributions against Ohio State were with his blocking, but he’s physical enough with good enough hands to make some noise as a pass-catcher, too. Overall, the name of Clemson’s offensive attack has to be balance. The Tigers are at their best when Etienne, Higgins, Ross and slot receiver Amari Rodgers are all able to create.

Do you have a score prediction?

Brody: So, I’ve come to the conclusion I think these teams are pretty even in the grand scheme of things. LSU’s offense is better than Clemson’s. Clemson’s defense is better than LSU’s, but it all evens out overall. My decision, though, is removed from logic or quantifiable aspects of football. I just see Burrow playing at a level I can’t quite comprehend. He’s a guy who’s seen so many elite defenses this year and picked them all apart. I think Burrow is so special he makes the difference.

I take LSU, 38-28. How about you?

Grace: Agreed across the board. I’ll go LSU, 35-31.

(Photo of LSU celebrating its Peach Bowl victory: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)