The No. 2 Clemson Tigers rolled the Pittsburgh Panthers in the ACC Championship Game to reach the College Football Playoff for the fourth year in a row.
It wasn’t a bye, but it might as well have been. The No. 2 Clemson Tigers stay perfect by throttling the Pittsburgh Panthers 41-10 to win the 2018 ACC Championship Game at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Saturday night.
Clemson has now won the ACC four years in a row. The Tigers are 100 percent a lock to be the No. 2 team in the College Football Playoff. This will also be the fourth year in a row that Dabo Swinney’s team will be playing for a shot at a national title.
If you don’t know, now you know. Clemson has become a college football blue-blood under Swinney’s guidance. Even though the ACC was down this year, perhaps best illustrated by a five-loss Pittsburgh team playing in the conference championship as the Coastal Division winner, there is no doubt about Clemson’s status as an elite college football program.
Many expected Clemson to win the ACC yet again and vie for another national championship. Clemson has made the Playoff each of the last three years, played in the national title twice in 2015 and 2016, winning it all over the Alabama Crimson Tide in the latter of the two. These two Southeastern college football powers are on a collision course to meet for the fourth year in a row in the Playoff. Unbelievable.
Clemson was far from perfect on the field this year, but remained perfect in the win/loss column. Last year’s starting quarterback Kelly Bryant opted to leave the program, as Swinney decided to go with the true freshman five-star that is Trevor Lawrence in the middle of the season. Lawrence suffered an injury in what was a narrow victory over the division rival Syracuse Orange.
Outside of that mid-season scare, it has been Clemson who has terrorized all in the ACC. The Tigers have a boat load of NFL Draft talent along the defensive line, headlined by Clelin Ferrell, Dexter Lawrence and Christian Wilkins. However, its best player this year might be its star running back Travis Etienne, who is a finalist for the Doak Walker Award as the nation’s best tailback.
Overall, the game wasn’t much to write home about, as Clemson took care of business and looked fantastic doing so. It was the type of dominating performance we’ve grown accustomed to in this era of Clemson football. Pittsburgh might be mediocre, but Clemson demonstrated this fall that it can beat anybody.
The Tigers will need two more wins to bring home its second national championship in three years and its third in school history. Though the defensive line may not be this formidable next year, we have to believe that Lawrence will only get better as he enters his sophomore season at Clemson in 2019.
Next: The 15 blue bloods of college football
Until some of their rivals like the Florida State Seminoles and the Louisville Cardinals get back to good, we can only expect the Clemson football program to humiliate all conference opponents it comes across. The ACC might have been largely horrendous this year, but Clemson is undoubtedly the second best team entering the Playoff after SEC Champion Alabama. Don’t be shocked if Clemson finds a way to win it all this year.