The era of the four-team college football playoff championship ends this season – a season after it was supposed to conclude. It was far from perfect and left us with plenty of controversy over the years, but it’s safe to say it was a better format for the final stage of the championship than the previous big bowl system.
Introduction
While there is an expanded field of 12 teams to look forward to next season, let’s first take a look at the top players of the four-team playoff era.
10. Derrick Henry, Running Back at Alabama
Henry’s statistics during the playoff were not astounding by his standards, but he still scored five touchdowns in two games with the national championship-winning Crimson Tide.
Henry won the Heisman Trophy before the playoff thanks to 90 carries in Alabama’s final two games of the season. He rushed 46 times for 271 yards and scored a touchdown in the Auburn game to finish the regular season, and rushed 44 times for 189 yards and scored a touchdown in the SEC championship game.
He rushed for only 75 yards and scored two touchdowns on 20 carries in Alabama’s easy win over Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl, before having 36 carries for 158 yards and three touchdowns in the 45-40 win over Clemson. Henry scored two touchdowns in the first half – including a 50-yard touchdown – and his one-yard touchdown with 1:07 remaining officially sealed the game for the Crimson Tide.
9. Justin Jefferson, Wide Receiver at LSU
The current Minnesota Vikings star showed just how unstoppable he was during the college football playoff at the end of the 2019 season.
Jefferson caught 14 passes for 227 yards and four touchdowns while defeating the Oklahoma Tigers in the Peach Bowl. All four of those catches came in the first 21 minutes of the game as LSU led the Sooners 35-7 before the midway point of the second quarter.
Two weeks later, Jefferson caught nine passes for 106 yards in LSU’s victory over Clemson in the final game. Jefferson finished the season with 111 receptions for 1,540 yards and 18 touchdowns while his teammate Ja’Marr Chase had 84 receptions for 1,780 yards and 20 touchdowns.
8. Jalen Hurts, Quarterback at Alabama and Oklahoma
You may not remember Hurts’ playoff performance for long, but he is the only player to start playoff games for two different teams.
Hurts began as a freshman for the Crimson Tide in 2016 and suffered his first defeat as a starter in the national championship game against Clemson. He completed only 13 of 31 passes in that game, but he also rushed 10 times for 63 yards and was seconds away from an undefeated season.
The following year, Alabama struggled in the final against Georgia before Tua Tagovailoa replaced Hurts midway through the game. Already, you know what happened next. Hurts spent his third season behind Tagovailoa at Alabama and briefly participated in both playoff games at the end of the 2018 season before transferring to Oklahoma.
At Oklahoma, Hurts finished second in Heisman voting to Burrow and led the Sooners to the college football playoff. While he didn’t have a big game against the Tigers in the playoff, it wasn’t due to his fault, as Oklahoma’s defense allowed seven touchdown passes in the first half by Burrow.
7.Trevor Lawrence, Quarterback at Clemson
Lawrence emerged as a standout player when he led the Tigers to a 15-0 record in 2018-19 and won the national championship. Lawrence took over as a starter in September and immediately became one of the best quarterbacks in college football as a true freshman. He passed for over 300 yards in every game of the College Football Playoff and threw three touchdown passes in the semifinal victory against Notre Dame and three more touchdown passes in Clemson’s easy win over Alabama to claim the national title.
The Tigers won 14 consecutive games to start Lawrence’s sophomore season and set up a matchup with Louisiana for the national championship. However, the Louisiana Tigers handed Lawrence his first loss as a college player.
Clemson returned to the playoff in Lawrence’s third and final season with the Tigers, but just like the previous year, the season ended in New Orleans. Lawrence threw a pick-six and lost a fumble in the 49-28 defeat to the Buckeyes.
In five playoff games, Lawrence threw 10 touchdown passes and 1,567 yards.
6. Ezekiel Elliott, Running Back at Ohio State
Elliott carried the Buckeyes on his back during their run to the national championship in the 2014-15 season.
Ohio State entered the final phase without both Braxton Miller and J.T. Barrett. Miller suffered a shoulder injury in August that sidelined him for the season, while Barrett sustained a season-ending injury in the Buckeyes’ win over Michigan. Those injuries placed Cardale Jones in the starting lineup.
Jones performed well as a playoff starter, but Elliott was the driving force of the offense. After rushing 20 times for 220 yards in the Big Ten Championship against Wisconsin, Elliott rushed 20 times for 230 yards and scored two touchdowns against Alabama. Elliott’s 85-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter against the Crimson Tide sealed the game and propelled the Buckeyes to the final.
He then set a record for carries against the Spartans as he led Ohio State to its first national title in the playoff era. After Oregon cut Ohio State’s lead to 21-20 in the third quarter, Elliott scored three more touchdowns in a 36-carry effort. His one-yard touchdown came with less than 30 seconds left in the game, finishing with 246 yards.
5. Deshaun Watson, Quarterback at Clemson
Watson was spectacular in both of his appearances in the championship game against Alabama.
In January 2016, Watson completed 30 of 47 passes for 405 yards and four touchdown passes in Clemson’s 45-40 loss to the Crimson Tide. Watson also rushed 20 times for 73 yards as he accounted for almost all of Clemson’s offensive yards.
In the following season, Watson was even better and produced one of the most iconic plays in playoff history. As he did the previous year, Watson carried the Clemson offense again, accounting for nearly all of the team’s offensive yards. Watson finished the game with four touchdown passes, completing 36 of 56 for 420 yards and 43 rushing yards.
The fourth touchdown came in the final seconds when Watson found Hunter Renfrow for the game-winning score in Clemson’s 35-31 victory over Alabama.
4. Tua Tagovailoa, Quarterback at Alabama
Tagovailoa is best known for his pass to DeVonta Smith to win against Georgia and Alabama could have made the playoff all three of his seasons in Tuscaloosa if not for a hip injury at the end of the 2019 season.
Tagovailoa took over
Tua Tagovailoa was responsible for starting as the primary quarterback at Alabama instead of Hurts in 2018 and the team went undefeated during the regular season. Tagovailoa was 24 of 27 for 318 yards and four touchdown passes in the 45-34 victory over Oklahoma in the 2018 Orange Bowl setting up a matchup against Clemson for the national championship. However, Tagovailoa was unable to recapture the magic of the championship game for a second consecutive title as he threw two interceptions in the 44-16 defeat to the Tigers.
Alabama was 8-1 with Tagovailoa as the starting quarterback in 2019, but he suffered a hip injury in the easy victory over Mississippi State in November. Two weeks later, Alabama lost to Auburn to end the regular season and any hopes of playoff qualification.
3. Stetson Bennett, Quarterback at Georgia
Bennett, the former quarterback of Georgia, is the only player to win consecutive titles in the College Football Playoff era. While it is undeniable that Bennett was the quarterback for two of the best overall teams of the millennium, he also played a vital role in their national championship victories.
Bennett was 17 of 26 for 224 yards and two touchdowns in Georgia’s revenge for their defeat in the SEC Championship Game against Alabama in the national championship on January 10, 2022. This performance came after he threw three touchdown passes in Georgia’s victory over Michigan in the semifinals.
The following year, Bennett was even better in the playoff. He tallied ten total touchdowns in Georgia’s two games in the national championship. Bennett was 23 of 34 for 398 yards and four touchdowns in Georgia’s 42-41 win over Ohio State in the Peach Bowl. In less than two weeks, he was 18 of 25 passing for 304 yards and four touchdown passes, adding two more rushing touchdowns in Georgia’s blowout win over TCU.
2. DeVonta Smith, Wide Receiver at Alabama
Smith went from national championship game hero as a freshman to a Heisman Trophy winner in his senior year at Alabama.
The pass that Smith caught from Tua Tagovailoa to win the national championship in 2017-18 was Smith’s eighth catch of the season and Tagovailoa’s 77th pass of the year.
The following year, Smith had 42 catches before he exploded onto the scene as a junior. While Alabama missed the playoffs in 2019, Smith announced his presence with 68 catches before amassing 1,256 yards and 14 touchdowns.
He was even better in 2020 when Alabama scored nearly 49 points per game and went 14-0 on their way to the national title. Smith recorded 117 receptions for 1,856 yards and 23 touchdowns – no other Alabama player had more than 55 receptions – as he became the first wide receiver since Desmond Howard to win the Heisman Trophy.
Smith capped off his Heisman-winning season with a spectacular performance in the playoff as well. He recorded seven receptions for 130 yards and three touchdowns against Notre Dame before achieving 12 receptions for 215 yards and three touchdown passes against Ohio State.
1. Joe Burrow, Quarterback at Louisiana
Burrow had the best season of any quarterback in modern college football in 2019 and was phenomenal in the College Football Playoff.
He scored
The previous quarter for Ohio State was 14 touchdown passes in playoff championship games against Oklahoma and Clemson. Burrow threw seven touchdown passes in a stunning first half against the Sooners in the Peach Bowl before running for another touchdown in the second half. Burrow finished that game with 29 of 39 for 493 yards in the best single-game passing performance in playoff championship history.
Two weeks later, Burrow was close to being outstanding against Clemson as well. Burrow finished the game with 31 of 49 for 463 yards and five touchdown passes while running 14 times for 58 yards and scoring a touchdown in Louisiana’s 15-0 victory.
Burrow threw for over 5,600 yards and 60 touchdown passes that season. And if you want to take a look at how good he was all season, the completion percentage of 63.3% in the national championship game was the first time of the year that Burrow completed less than 70% of his passes in a single game.
Source: https://www.aol.com/end-era-10-best-players-154312035.html
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