The Clemson Insider went back and ranked Clemson’s 25 best teams of all-time.
What classifies a certain team as one of the best? Of course winning a championship—national or conference—will be the first qualification. The other qualifications are overall record, national ranking and where they fell in the conference standings.
We continue our rankings with the No. 14 team on our list:
The 2012 Tigers (11-2, 7-1 ACC, Final ranking No. 11)
Dabo Swinney has talked about building a consistent winner ever since he took over the Clemson program in 2008. He wants to build one that year in and year out is competing for national and conference championships, and consistently is being talked about on the national scene.
After winning their first ACC Championship in 20 years in 2011, Swinney’s Tigers followed that up with an 11-win season—the school’s first in 31 years.
Thirty five times prior to the 2012 Chick-fil-A Bowl, that senior class has walked off the football field victorious. And though those 35 wins were sweet, it’s hard to imagine any of them being as sweet as Clemson’s 25-24 victory over No. 7 LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl that night in Atlanta, GA.
“This was special,” senior defensive end Malliciah Goodman said.
It was special, as were the 11 scholarship seniors that capped off one of the more accomplished careers in Clemson history with a monumental win. Like the 1978 team’s victory over Woody Hayes’ Ohio State Buckeyes, and like the 1981 squads win over the big-bad Cornhuskers of Nebraska, no one gave Clemson a realistic shot at beating LSU in the Georgia Dome.
LSU is from the powerful SEC. They played for the national championship the year before, and they were just one play away from playing for it for a second straight year. Clemson came into the Chick-fil-A Bowl still wondering if they belong.
They wondered if they were as good as the Alabamas, LSUs and Floridas of the world, or were they just a top 15 team that can’t compete with the big boys of college football?
They found out they can.
“This is a football team that got better all year long,” Swinney said about his 2012 bunch. “Tonight we kind of grew up from some of the challenges we’ve had earlier in the year. I’m just so proud of our team, our staff, for their preparation. I’m proud of them for their commitment and their toughness, just their overall performance against a great LSU team.”
The 2012 senior class was the fewest at Clemson since 1999, but they accomplished more than any class in the previous 21 years. Their 36 wins rank as the ninth most in school history and the most since the 1991 seniors won 39 games.
At the time, they accomplished the most ACC wins in a four-year stretch with 23. They won the Atlantic Division title three times in four years. They won the program’s first ACC Championship in 20 years and they recorded back-to-back 10-win seasons, the first senior class to do that since the 1992 seniors, and the list goes on.
“Man, those guys, they’ve taken this program where it hasn’t been in 31 years,” Swinney said. “They won more games than any senior group in forever. Set a record for conference wins. Set a school-record for home wins. The thing I’m the most proud of is that every single one of them has their degree.”
Besides beating LSU, the Tigers opened the season with a win over Auburn in the Georgia Dome. They also blew out Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Duke, and Maryland, and scored 62 points against NC State.
The 2012 team had one of the more prolific offenses in school history. With quarterback Tajh Boyd, DeAndre Hopkins, Andre Ellington, Brandon Ford and Sammy Watkins leading the way, the Tigers averaged 41.0 points and 512.7 yards per game.
Boyd completed 67.2 percent of his passes for a record 3,896 yards and 36 touchdowns, while also running for 514 more yards and 10 touchdowns. Ellington went over a 1,000 yards for a second straight season and scored eight touchdowns, while Hopkins broke every receiving record imaginable for a single-season with 82 catches for 1,405 yards and 18 touchdowns.
Along with center Dalton Freeman, Boyd, Hopkins and Watkins were all named All-Americans, while Ellington, Ford and tackle Brandon Thomas joined them on the All-ACC team. Placekicker Chandler Catanzaro and safety Rashard Hall also earned All-ACC honors.
Boyd described Catanzaro as “Money,” and for good reason. The Clemson quarterback said he never doubted Catanzaro’s ability when he lined up for a 37-yard field goal with two seconds to play in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.
“When (LSU) called the timeout to ice him, it meant nothing. I wanted to go up in the stands and celebrate already because I knew he was going to kick it through those uprights,” Boyd said.
That’s exactly what Catanzaro did. The Greenville, South Carolina native calmly drilled the 37-yard field goal through the uprights as time expired, giving Clemson the victory.
“I just love that guy,” Boyd said. “He is a warrior. He is one of the strongest people I know, and he just comes through in the clutch.”
Boyd, 2012 ACC Player of the Year, came through in the clutch, too. The Chick-fil-A Bowl’s MVP led the Tigers on a 10-play, 60-yard drive in the final 1:39.
After being sacked on third down, Clemson faced a fourth down-and-16 from its own 14-yard line. It appeared LSU had Clemson right where it wanted them, but so did Boyd.
Clemson ran a switch play with two seams, with the receivers crossing. When Boyd walked up to the line, he saw the coverage and noticed someone had the inside guy. Wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who crushed just about every receiving record in 2012, then got past the inside guy and Boyd delivered a perfect strike for 26 yards and a first down.
The play is now simply known in Clemson lore as “4th-and-16.”
“Nuk kind of squirted by one high and I didn’t really know he was going to get on top of him like that so I kind of released a little bit earlier, but again, being the kind of receiver he is, he always finds the ball in the air,” Boyd said. “It was just a ridiculous play. I could not really see it because some of these guys are 6-5 and 6-6 so just hearing the roars of the Clemson crowd was a great feeling and a great sound.”
After the first down catch by Hopkins, Boyd found his favorite target, again, for seven yards and then Hopkins drew a pass interference penalty from LSU safety Eric Reid that moved the football to the LSU 42. On second-and-seven from the 39, Boyd found Hopkins along the right sideline for a 13-yard gain to the 26 and then he hit Adam Humphries on a slant that got the ball to the 16.
Two plays later, after Boyd positioned the football in the middle of the field on a keeper, Catanzaro was true with the fourth game-winning kick in Clemson history.
“I knew right when it left my foot that it was good,” Catanzaro said. “I want to say I didn’t even see it hit the net. I just took off like I did against Wake Forest, except this time I fell which was good. Everybody dogged pile me, which was pretty cool.”
What made it even cooler was the fact Clemson rallied from an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win the game. Trailing 24-13, Boyd, who completed 36 of 50 passes for 346 yards, led the Tigers on a 13-play, 63-yard drive that took 5:26 off the clock. Catanzaro capped the drive with a 26-yard field goal to pull Clemson within eight points, 24-16 with 9:46 to play.
After the Clemson defense—which held LSU to 219 total yards—stopped the SEC Tigers on three plays, Boyd again engineered a scoring drive, this time ending with a 12-yard touchdown pass to Hopkins, the second time the two teamed up for a score.
Following a failed two-point conversion try, the Clemson defense stepped up big again by forcing another three-and-out, giving the football to the offense at its own 20 with 1:39 to play and with all three timeouts.
Playing against one of the best defenses in the country, Boyd found Hopkins for the 26-yard gain a few moments later and he knew then they were about to make history.
“When we crossed the 40, I knew we were good to go,” Hopkins said. “We can’t throw a pick, just go out there drive the ball and go win the game.”
And that’s what they did.