GLENDALE, Ariz.—The play that started Alabama’s steamrolling of Michigan State in last week’s College Football Playoff semifinal was a 50-yard pass to wide receiver Calvin Ridley that brought the Crimson Tide to the 1-yard line. They soon scored their first points of the game, and the rout was on.  The play that all but ended Alabama’s blowout was another 50-yard pass to Ridley. This one went for a touchdown and made it 31-0 in the third quarter. The rout was mercifully almost over.  But here’s the most notable thing about those two Alabama plays: They weren’t actually Alabama’s.  Chris B. Brown, a corporate lawyer who writes about strategy for his website Smart Football, was watching the game the next morning, unable to stay up on New Year’s Eve with two young children, when he noticed something unusual. Alabama had recycled the same plays that had worked for Baylor and Oregon in their recent games against Michigan State.  The first Alabama deep ball was a ripoff of a Baylor play that went for a touchdown against Michigan State in the very same bowl game and stadium last season. The second Ridley bomb was right out of Chip Kelly’s old playbook at Oregon.  Alabama coach Nick Saban and offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin have a history of borrowing plays. Brown remembered Alabama scoring against Wisconsin this season on a run that Ohio State used to run all over Oregon in last season’s national championship. But they’re at their most brazen in bowl games, because that’s when they can add a few wrinkles that might work against only one opponent.  “They have done a good job of pulling ideas from different teams and using them to often devastating effect,” Brown said in an email.  Their strategic plagiarism is one reason Alabama plays again Monday for the national championship, and we can only assume that Saban and Kiffin have locked themselves in a film room this week on the lookout for the plays that Clemson has struggled to defend. So we decided to do the same thing.  It turns out there weren’t that many plays to watch. This season, Clemson surrendered only nine passing plays of 40 yards or more, which means there were some games when bagels had more holes than the Tigers’ defense. But after a comprehensive breakdown of those plays—and interviews with the coaches who designed them—we came up with four that Kiffin might want to slip into his playbook before the final game of the season.  Here are the plays that may decide Monday’s national championship.  Clemson at Louisville (Sept. 17)  Clemson’s defensive philosophy is fairly simple. The Tigers load up against the run on early downs, use star cornerback Mackensie Alexander to lock up the opposing team’s best receiver, and then they blitz like crazy in obvious passing situations.  But when opponents stopped the blitz, the Tigers were in the awkward position of being vulnerable to deep plays down the sideline. Louisville and Wake Forest both exploited that weakness with the same three-receiver set that resulted in long completions.  “They run a lot of pressures on third down, so we decided to run a max-protection play that kept our tight end and running back in and slid the protection to pick up Clemson’s blitz,” said Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson.  When blitzing against three-receiver plays, Clemson tends to rotate coverage to the wide side of the field. That usually leaves the receiver on the short side of the field in a one-on-one matchup that presents a rare advantage for Clemson’s opponent.  In the third week of the season, Louisville ran this play for a 55-yard completion to Jaylen Smith on a second-and-10. Wake Forest ran the same exact play eight games later. It worked again for a 30-yard touchdown pass to Cortez Lewis.  Clemson vs. Notre Dame (Oct. 4)  In Alexander and fellow cover man Cordrea Tankersley, Clemson has perhaps the best pair of cornerbacks in college football. They line up directly in front of receivers in press-man coverage and usually stick with them stride for stride down the field.  Playing man-to-man coverage on the outside allows Tigers defensive coordinator Brent Venables to deploy junior safety T.J. Green close to the line of scrimmage, where he can help in run support and cut off short passes. Green, who is 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, is an intimidating presence in the middle of the field, but teams have found some success by sending running backs and tight ends on sideline routes and forcing him to cover them outside the hashes.  Clemson gave up a long touchdown catch to Notre Dame on one such play. Running back C.J. Prosise slid out of the backfield and then cut upfield along the sideline on a wheel route. By the time Clemson’s defense caught on, Prosise was on his way to a 56-yard score.  Clemson vs. North Carolina (Dec. 6)  Clemson’s heavy use of press-man coverage has helped neutralize some of the best receivers in college football this season.  But there are times when it has proved vulnerable against tight bunch formations, in which receivers line up near the line of scrimmage and in close proximity to one another.  By moving away from the sideline, the receivers now have the option to go inside or outside on pass patterns, while the reduced splits between them create natural picks or rubs against man coverage, allowing receivers to get open.  The Tigers usually respond to these looks by switching to zone coverage or playing off-man, where the cornerbacks back up seven or eight yards deep and react to routes as they develop. But the brief moment of confusion they create in the Clemson defense can also make for some big plays.  In the ACC Championship game against North Carolina, the Tar Heels brought receiver Mack Hollins in motion to create a bunch formation of three receivers on the left side. As the Clemson defense scrambled to cover the criss-crossing routes of the two outside receivers, Quinshad Davis got free on a corner route for a 40-yard gain.  Clemson vs. Wofford (Sept. 5)  When Wofford head coach Mike Ayers began watching film of Clemson during the offseason, he realized right away that he was in for a long afternoon. “They’ve got a lot of Cadillacs back there,” he said.  He knew his team couldn’t outrun Clemson’s defensive backs. So the offense would have to improvise. “If you can’t run away from them,” Ayers said, “you’ve got to trick them.”  The answer: a double-pass play known as Ace Left 61 Smoke Vegas. “We used Vegas on that one because we were rolling the dice to see if we could make a play,” he said.  With two receivers lined up to his left and three runners in the backfield, Terriers quarterback Evan Jacks took the snap from under center and rifled a quick pass to outside receiver Will Irwin. Clemson’s aggressive secondary bit on the quick hitch but as they converged on the Wofford receiver, Irwin cocked his elbow and lofted a pass to senior running back Will Gay, who had gotten behind the safety Green.  The play was executed flawlessly and would be Wofford’s longest of the day, a gain of 41 yards. Against almost anyone else, Ayers said, it would have gone for a touchdown.  “I was on the boundary and I’m saying: ‘Gosh, we got a touchdown!’ And then all of a sudden, it was like Wooosh! And the safety had caught up with Will,” Ayers said. “That’s the one thing that play defines. Even though we had them beat, that safety never gave up.”  Write to Jonathan Clegg at jonathan.clegg@wsj.com and Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com
The Alabama Crimson Tide like to copy what has worked for other teams, so here are four plays where the Tigers got beat for a long pass this season that may reappear Monday.