Clemson Football: 2015 Tigers were ‘mentally fatigued’ in Bama loss

Give Alabama credit, they were a great team back in 2015, but it just wasn’t a fair playing field for a mentally fatigued Clemson football team.

Does anybody remember Clemson football’s loss to Alabama in the 2015 National Championship game? Well, it doesn’t really count as a loss anymore. (Not by the new standards set by SEC media, fans and analysts)

I mean, yes Alabama was a great team that year. They were the most talented team in the nation. The Crimson Tide were dominant all season and played a tough schedule according to metrics, but you can’t actually look at metrics.

Why? If we looked at metrics, they would actually tell us that in 2018- this past season- Clemson played a tougher schedule (No. 47 in SOS before the CFB Playoff) compared to Alabama (No. 50 in SOS before the CFB Playoff), and that can’t be right.

You see, SEC analysts will swear up and down that- though there are no facts or statistics to support the claim- Alabama actually played a ‘tough’ and ‘brutal’ SEC schedule in 2018 that caused mental fatigue for the players, giving Clemson an unfair advantage in the National Championship game.

So, really, the same claim should be made about the 2015 Clemson football team against Alabama.

You see, what actually happened four years ago was that the Tigers were mentally fatigued, not that they were beaten by a better team.

Even though Clemson found a way to go undefeated, they played a ‘brutal’ schedule that included games against No. 16 Florida State, No. 6 Notre Dame and No. 10 North Carolina, just to name a few. Even Louisville and NC State were on the brink of being ranked as the ACC Atlantic was on the upswing following that season.

Just for comparison, Clemson played those three top-16 opponents in 2015. Similarly, Alabama played three top-16 opponents this season- UGA, LSU and Mississippi State. *Cough* *Overrated* *Cough.*

So, the schedules are basically a wash. As a matter of fact, the 2015 Clemson football schedule was ranked No. 24 in SOS, which was much higher than Alabama’s schedule this past season.

The Tigers would have every right to claim mental fatigue, right?

I mean, they actually played a tougher schedule than this year’s Alabama team. They had to play Oklahoma in the first round of the CFB Playoff, just the same as the Crimson Tide.

But, instead, all I can remember is analysts, players and coaches alike giving credit to Alabama after the loss.

The Truth…

Do you see how silly it is to make the ‘mentally fatigued’ argument for Clemson in 2015? It’s the same exact thing for Alabama this past season.

It’s just a crutch that SEC fans have held onto forever to excuse losses in big moments (after all the SEC is 26-28 vs. the ACC in the past five seasons).

The truth is a hard pill to swallow for SEC fans: *Alabama didn’t play a tough schedule in 2018.*

It was no tougher of a road to the playoff than any other year. If anything, this past season may have been the easiest schedule that Bama has played in quite some time. You can’t claim ‘mental fatigue.’ It’s just not accurate.

And it really has nothing to do with Clemson’s regular season schedule, either, since there was more than a month between conference championship week and when the two teams matched up on the field.

In 2015, Alabama was the better team and Clemson football players (and fans) said as much. The Tigers didn’t play a ‘cupcake schedule’ that season. It was a tough road, but they still didn’t claim ‘mental fatigue’ or blame the championship loss on the schedule.

Instead, they owned up to the loss and got better as a result. They came back and won the National Championship the following year.

The same can be said about this past season as for what Alabama needs to do. The Crimson Tide- fans and analysts- need to own up to the loss and move on.

Stop coming up with excuses and allowing yourself to be brainwashed by analysts making absolutely outlandish claims with no basis of truth in them. It’s just disingenuous talk with no merit or reason other than ‘we don’t like the outcome, so we have to find a way to explain what we wanted to see instead.’

Clemson was the better team, plain and simple. The result happened and it’s time to move on.

If the Tigers had Alabama’s schedule last season, they would’ve gone undefeated. They were the best team in the country, and it really wasn’t even that close. Stop living in hypotheticals and look at reality. We can play the ‘what-if’ game all day with both sides, but that’s not going to change reality.

Oh, and reality says 44-16. There’s no arguing with that.