Why Didn’t Alabama Commit Pass Interference on the Final Play?
An intentional penalty might have been Alabama’s best strategy to beat Clemson for the national championship. But they played it straight—and lost.
Clemson was at the 2-yard line down three points with only seconds left in Monday’s national championship when the Tigers called one last play.
With the national title at stake, Alabama still had a way to ensure its optimal scenario. So why didn’t the Crimson Tide use it?
All they had to do was commit an obvious pass-interference penalty. It was the one time all season that Alabama’s defenders wrapping Clemson’s receivers in enormous bear hugs actually would have been the right strategy. And yet the idea of an intentional penalty—like a hack in basketball—is so unthinkable in college football that a team with the sport’s most dominant coach wouldn’t even try it when it was his best shot to win the national title.
A penalty would’ve resulted in a first-and-goal for the Tigers at the 1-yard line—with enough time on the clock to run exactly one more play. Even if there were no time remaining, though, Clemson would’ve been entitled to that play because the game can’t end on a defensive flag.
But that would have left Tigers coach Dabo Swinney with a hugely risky decision in a 31-28 game: take the points for overtime, or take a shot at the national title? The former was Alabama’s best-case scenario barring a highly unlikely turnover. The latter was the lousy situation they were already in.
Taking a penalty on purpose in this situation may seem radical, but it’s actually an established football strategy that can be traced to one football’s greatest defensive minds: former NFL coach Buddy Ryan. The goal-line play is detailed in a page of Ryan’s old playbook that Chris B. Brown published on his website Smart Football. Brown called it “clever and devious.”
Ryan’s plan sent three extra linebackers onto the field to help accomplish his one goal: force the referees to throw a penalty flag. That sentiment might violate the spirit of the game and not win many friends. But it’s also a perfectly legal play—a loophole waiting to be exploited—to win games.
“We want to stop their offense from scoring, and in the process, we want to run the clock down to where they have enough time for just one play,” Ryan wrote, according to Smart Football. “So, we will stop them, get penalized half the distance to the goal, but leave them with enough time to run one play. We will then go back to our regular goal-line defense and stop them to win the game.”
Alabama wouldn’t have been able to do this an infinite number of times. But assuming it worked, they only would’ve needed to do it once. “If it happened more than once and was so blatant as to be obviously intentional, then the rules allow for the referee to award the touchdown anyway,” said Rogers Redding, the NCAA’s officiating coordinator. “The procedure would be that the referee would warn the defensive coach that if it happens again, the touchdown would be awarded and the game would be over.”
Swinney would’ve had a tricky decision if Saban forced his hand. He’s not exactly conservative, but he probably would have sent his kicking team and taken his chances in overtime, as most coaches would.
And he wouldn’t have been wrong. Clemson had already run more plays against Alabama than any team in the Saban era. Tigers coaches thought before the game that 80 plays would tire Alabama. This would have been their 100th. It was clearly working: Alabama’s defense had cracked, and Clemson suddenly had an edge.
But overtime also presupposed that Clemson kicker Greg Huegel would’ve made the biggest field goal of his life. The short kick itself would’ve been a gimme, though not a certainty: Huegel had attempted only three field goals since Nov. 12 and missed two of them.
And who knows what might’ve happened in overtime? No one now. Because instead of making an unconventional but potentially brilliant call, Alabama played it straight.
Clemson ran a cunning play of its own—a “rub” route in which one receiver essentially sets a pick for the other—and Hunter Renfrow caught the go-ahead, game-winning touchdown pass with one second left.
There were no flags on the play.
