My only issue with LSU was the 3 close wins. If they were the best playoff-era team overall, why the 3 close wins?
Sept 7 - 7 point win @ 9 Texas
Oct 26 - 3 point win vs 9 Auburn
Nov 9 - 5 point win @ 2 Alabama
All of them were top-10 teams, and one of them was early, but still. Kudos on winning the games, but would such a great team have THREE of these games?
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I went with 2020 Alabama, mostly due to no regular season games closer than 14 points and even bigger - possibly the toughest schedule for a NC ever. Zero gimmies. No layups. No directional schools or MAC-tion or any of that. 10 conference games (even missed Vandy), a CCG, then 2 playoff games. No breathers.
I think it's the most impressive thing on any team's resume. Maybe ever.
Here's my thoughts on the three options offered:
Re: LSU
"Why the three close wins?" As you noted, the defense was just okay, at least early on. Aranda himself admitted after the sixth game that he had to go back to the drawing board for the season because what he thought he could do with the personnel he had just wasn't working. Instead of continuing to hammer something that just wasn't working, he began to re-scheme the entire thing. That's a legit shortcoming. There was also a rash of injuries in the Texas game (week 2) which hindered things. 7 starters went out and 5 missed multiple games going forward. That's not an excuse, it's just one of the reasons the defense was mediocre until down the stretch. All that said, Texas is really the only one of those games the offense really had to bail out the defense. The defense played plenty well enough vs. Auburn, the offense just struggled with the looks AU gave them (was a good thing, because other teams would try the same thing later but Burrow had already figured out what to do with that). Alabama was a weird game. LSU lead Alabama by 20 pts or so at the half and the defense was doing fine enough. Bama then pulled out some of the most desperate (and imo lamest) plays I've ever seen, but hey, they worked. Like the pretending to look to the sidelines to change a play so they caught Stingley looking for his updated assignment (all teams do this) but it was a fake, they snapped the ball and ran right by him for a long TD. Like I say, it worked. But it wasn't "bad defense" by usual metrics. It was a "hey we're desperate to get back in this and we can't compete with them straight up." So they outsmarted us, several times. Which, I wouldn't criticize somebody for calling that "bad defense," I guess. Player vs. player, that game shouldn't have been/wasn't as close as the score wound up. i.e., our corners did way better against their fleet of receivers than their's did against ours.....except for the "oh FFS" plays. I think Delpit was the last guy to get healthy at the end of the year, and after that they played great down the final stretch. That was a hallmark of Aranda's defenses though, 2019 was not unique. Our defense was always "just okay" for half of the year, and then they would tighten up like a boa constrictor in the final weeks. For whatever reason, it always took him/them 7/8 games to round into form. The A&M game, SECCG vs. UGA, and the playoffs, that defense played elite. But because they had so many problems prior to that....I probably wouldn't vote for that team. By playoff time? Sure, they have an argument. For the whole season? Nah, defense was too wobbly, no matter what the offense was doing.
Re: Bama
A great year strictly by the numbers. Although they avoided cupcakes, they played less games, and that's a hit. Winning 13 games isn't as hard as winning 15, no matter who you're playing. Their achievement that year is also in light of the dumbest, weirdest year cfb has ever seen. Every defense in the country was crap due to a lot less tackling in practice teams had instituted, or practice in general. Whatever the case, I didn't see a single great defense the entire year--except for Bama, eventually. They started crappy like everybody else but ultimately were the only squad to figure out how to tackle that year despite whatever challenges defenses were facing. So really, you have to give them credit for that. Mac Jones had a stellar year. But playing in a bunch of empty stadiums with no crowd noise getting at you is far different than what other QBs/teams have to deal with in a typical season. It made a difference and I feel like that's backed up by his career in the NFL so far. I'm leery of assigning too much to a guy's college career based on his pro career, but it does confirm my suspicion Jones isn't as hot with a ton of game-atmosphere pressure, which he didn't have in 2020. And him and that entire offense were playing against the aforementioned crap defenses. Like....all of them. Best team that year for sure, no contest. Best in the field of consideration? Not so sure.
Ergo, my winner is Clemson, by default. They probably have drawbacks too, I just don't know them.
