Clemson football: Pete Thamel discusses the ‘secret’ to unseating Tigers

The 2021 Clemson football season is just a few weeks from officially kicking off and there are going to be numerous opinions given on the Tigers until we get to that point.

Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel recently wrote a column on the ‘SuperSeniors’ who were granted another year of eligibility in 2020 and if the combined added experience of many programs around the nation might affect how we see the College Football season play out this fall.

Thamel said that the added experience to rosters, combined with the relative inexperience of the top-tiered programs in Clemson, Alabama and Ohio State could lead to more upsets than what we’ve gotten used to seeing in the past few years.

"“The lack of experience at quarterback and relative inexperience at the country’s top three programs — Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State – in theory makes the notion of unpredictability in 2021 somewhat predictable. It’ll be harder than any recent season to just assume Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson will Storm Trooper to inevitable playoff glory, especially if their boldfaced name attrition is magnified by all the old heads returning,” Thamel wrote."

The problem is the far talent between Clemson football, as well as Alabama and Ohio State, and everyone else

It’s one thing to talk about Georgia, Oklahoma or even a ‘one-year wonder’ type team like Iowa State, LSU or North Carolina upsetting Clemson, Alabama or Ohio State.

Could Georgia finally rise to that level? Sure. Could another team inside the top-10 beat one of those top teams on a given Saturday? Sure.

But, ‘unseating’ them is a completely different story.

Kenny Pickett’s fifth-year of eligibility isn’t going to propel Pittsburgh over Clemson in the ACC. That’s just not how it works.

When you look at the talent gap between Clemson and everyone else in the ACC, it’s noticeable. The same thing can be said about Ohio State in the Big Ten and even Alabama in the mighty SEC, though the Crimson Tide could be subject to some difficulties when looking at how much NFL talent they lost off that 2020 team.

The other portion of unseating Clemson would be if the Tigers weren’t replacing Trevor Lawrence with a quarterback like D.J. Uiagalelei. Anyone who has watched Uiagalelei will likely tell you he is a more gifted passer than Lawrence. That’s how talented he simply is.

It might be fun to look at programs who could take a jab at reaching the top, but the truth of the matter is that Clemson football- and those other programs who have been around the top- isn’t going anywhere for the time being.