On3 national analyst Josh Pate is predicting the College Football Playoff will come to Death Valley this December. He's also predicting the Clemson Tigers' stay will be a short one.
In his final preseason bracket, Pate has the Tigers falling in the quarterfinals, and his reasoning comes from a stunning, private conversation with the coach he's picking to beat them.
A Home Game, Then Heartbreak
Pate's projection has Clemson earning the No. 5 seed, granting them a first-round home playoff game against No. 12 Boise State. He expects the Tigers to roll in that matchup.
"Clemson is not losing to Boise. They're not," Pate said definitively. "If they do, you're talking about a cataclysmic failure."
But that's where the run ends. In the quarterfinal, Pate predicts a neutral-site loss to the Oregon Ducks.
'I Sat in a Room with Dan Lanning'
Pate's confidence in the upset stems directly from a recent, off-the-record conversation with Oregon head coach Dan Lanning about the Ducks getting "smoked" in last year's playoff.
"Without sharing state secrets, I sat in a room with Dan Lanning last week. Talked to him in vivid detail about that experience," Pate revealed. "The Rose Bowl experience, how do you learn from that?… Suffice it to say, I think they learned from it. I'm going to apply that theory here and pick them to beat Clemson."
An Underlying Question of Depth
Pate's prediction is also rooted in a familiar concern he has with the Tigers' roster: a lack of elite depth compared to the nation's other top programs.
"I don’t trust their depth to be championship caliber," he reiterated. "Texas has got different depth than Clemson does. Alabama has different depth than Clemson does."
Pate ultimately has Alabama defeating Oregon in the National Championship. For Clemson, his forecast is clear: a season good enough to host a playoff game, but one that ends in disappointment at the hands of a motivated Oregon team that has learned from its past failures.