By Will Vandervort.
By Will Vandervort
ATLANTA — With the football rested at his own 20-yard line with 1:39 to play and needing at least 47 yards to put Clemson within field goal range to win the 2012 Chick-fil-A Bowl, it was exactly the situation Tajh Boyd wanted to be in.
“When games are somewhat easy, it’s not exactly the most fun thing,” said Boyd after throwing for 346 yards and two touchdowns. “It looks good statistically and you are able to get out of the game early, but you live for these moments to grind and sweat it out with your teammates out there.”
Thanks to Boyd, who was 5 for 8 for 58 yards on the game’s final drive, Clemson grinded out a 60-yard drive, while converting a fourth-and-16 from its own 14-yard line, to set up Chandler Catanzaro with the game-winning kick from 37 yards out for a 25-24 victory over No. 7 LSU.
And though 13th-ranked Clemson (11-2) had all kinds of heroes inside the Georgia Dome Monday night—wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, tight end Brandon Ford, defensive end Malliciah Goodman and defensive tackle Grady Jarrett—it was the gutsy effort of their quarterback that lifted Clemson to its first bowl victory since beating Kentucky in the Music City Bowl in 2009.
From the get go LSU smacked Clemson in the mouth. First by laying a shot on star wide receiver Sammy Watkins that knocked him out of the game on the second play, and then taking out Boyd’s starting right tackle Gifford Timothy in the second quarter.
But Clemson’s offense hung tough and did not falter, and that was mostly due to Boyd, who despite being sacked five times and hit countless more, stayed in the pocket and delivered one of the most memorable victories in Clemson’s storied history.
“That’s what great players do,” Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said. “It’s like I told him before the game, everybody has a role. When someone is open, you have to pull the trigger. Boy, did he make some big, big, big throws and made some huge runs.
“It’s not about how hard you get hit it’s about can you keep competing. Can you get up and keep competing? That’s what it’s about in the game of football. That’s what it is about in the game of life. It isn’t always going to be pretty.”
It definitely did not start out pretty. On the game’s second play, Watkins was knocked out of the game with a right ankle sprain. On the play, LSU knocked the football loose as well, and recovered it at the Clemson 23.
Two plays later Jeremy Hill went 17 yards for a touchdown for a 7-0 lead just like that.
But Boyd stayed cool and so did his teammates. Clemson answered the LSU score as Boyd directed an 11-play, 75-yard drive that he capped with an 11-yard run. Clemson twice picked up first downs on third and long to keep the chains moving.
After falling behind 14-7 in the second quarter, Boyd again engineered a long scoring drive, this time 70 yards in 10 plays which he again finished off with an 11-yard touchdown pass to DeAndre Hopkins.
But the biggest test of Boyd’s character and toughness came in the fourth quarter. Trailing 24-13, he led Clemson on scoring drives of 63 and 77 yards, including another touchdown pass to Hopkins—this time from 12 yards—to move Clemson within two points at 24-22.
When his defense rose up again and gave him the ball back, Boyd knew there was only one thing he was going to do, and that was lead Clemson on the game-winning drive.
“I never had any doubt,” he said.
Even on fourth-and-16 from his own 14-yard line, after being sacked for a fifth time, Boyd stayed calm as he sat in the pocket and delivered a strike to Hopkins, who came open down the seam for a first down at the 40.
“Hits hurt a little bit, and I’ll be hurting in the morning, but I think it is well worth it,” he said. “In this type of offense and with this team, you have to lay everything out on the line. I don’t have a game tomorrow, next week or next month so I can sit in an ice bath as long as I want and get that soreness out.”
Leading a game-winning drive to beat a national championship caliber team in a major bowl game also helps take the sting out of all the pain.
“Everybody was laying it all on the line and I felt I had to do the same for my teammates,” Boyd said. “We came through strong today.”
And it was all because of their quarterback.