Backdoor cover with a late TD?

but I think his "recent" model predicts a closer game. ND's strength in computer ratings is being held down partly by the closeness of the scores against Vanderbilt and Ball State.

Normally I would say there's no reason to exclude games like that. But in this case they happened before a quarterback change that made quite a difference for the offense.

Our best win, against Michigan, was with Wimbush as the starting QB too.

Syracuse or Northwestern might be considered better wins than Michigan.

Because they overvalue home/away and overvalue point spread.

If anything, people could (probably reasonably) argue that we would’ve beaten Michigan by more with Book and Dex.

I think the “can’t have it both ways” is more applicable to people looking at the close A&M/Syracuse results for Clemson while not factoring in Lawrence wasn’t the QB for most of those games, yet still claiming Vandy/Ball State as flukes because of no Book.

Sagarin's model is pretty complicated, with four different predictors. I went with the "RATING" factor because it's a (in his words) "synthesis of the three different SCORE-BASED methods".

A more accurate statement would have been, "Sagarin's model has Clemson by 4.24-12.41 points".