Orange Crush: Jeff Scott goes behind the scenes on Clemson's championship-clinching play

It was a good thing for Clemson that they ran it a few more times to make sure everyone was on the same page.

Grayson Mann - Staff Writer - Tuesday, May 06 2025

Long gone are the streams of confetti on the grounds of Raymond James Stadium.

Those items burst into orange as the Tigers claimed their first National Championship in decades back in January 2017, putting Clemson back on the mountain top.

That confetti may be long gone, but the memories of Clemson getting there are still fresh in Jeff Scott's mind.

Scott, Clemson's co-offensive coordinator at the time, also remembers the moment of pure euphoria in the locker room hours after Hunter Renfrow's game-winning touchdown.

"Did I call that play?" Scott asked fellow coordinator Tony Elliott.

Elliott walked his colleague and former Clemson teammate through that sequence of events, and the emotion of that particular moment probably caused some form of blackout.

Circle back to the day before the game, and Scott just had a feeling this play was going to have a large impact on the outcome, if not decide it entirely.

The play originally was part of Clemson's two-point package, designed to counter Alabama's man-to-man tendencies on the goal line.

There was one problem at the final practice. Scott didn't love the timing of it between Deshaun Watson, Hunter Renfrow, and Artavis Scott. It was time for some extra reps.

"We actually went back, and the team was going inside, and those guys came over, and we ran through it about three times," Scott said on TigerNet's Orange Crush Podcast this week. "And I just said, all right, I want you guys to have this in your mind. This is the play to win the game, a two-point play. And so that was what we did as the team left the field."

It is one thing to have a play ready for any given situation, but the chaos of the National Championship coming down to the wire certainly means being fixed on the moment.

As the clock ticked down, Scott's moment would come.

Watson's lob to the left corner of the end zone to Mike Williams resulted in yellow laundry being cast onto the field.

Pass interference.

Clemson was at the two-yard line with six seconds to go, and at that moment, Scott knew he had the right play to win the game.

"When Deshaun threw it to Mike Williams over there in the end zone, the play before we got the pass interference, when the ball moved up basically to where a two-point play would be, that's when I immediately called out the play there, and I said, 'Hey, we're good here,'" Scott said. "This is exactly where we want to be."

Years later, the play looks like flawless execution. Clemson got the look it wanted, and the accompanying hardware that came with it.

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As Scott looks back, it truly never was that simple. Out of his own curiosity, he asked Watson what he would've done if Renfrow had been covered. Watson's answer held his usual confidence, but Scott playfully adds that he might've been looking for a new role had things gone a different way.

"I walked up there and asked Deshaun and said, Hey, what would you have done if they had covered it?" Scott asked his quarterback. "And he said, well, I would've ran it in and scored. And so all I could think about is, oh my gosh, if he'd tried to do that and got tackled and the game's over, I might've been selling real estate back in 2017."

It was a good thing for Clemson that they ran it a few more times to make sure everyone was on the same page.