Clemson is not a young team. 16 starters are juniors or seniors. That is not young. Now we count 2 deep players when judging a young team? Do young players contribute for Clemson? Yes they do. But to say Clemson is a young team is not actuate.
The youth of a team is judged by the starting lineup not depth. A lot of teams have freshman or sophomore on 2 deeps.
Young at qb and young at WR that’s it
It counts when they actually play, and if you were actually listening to what I'm trying to tell you, they play a lot. Actually more reps than the "starters" in some cases, like in the example I gave you with Xavier Thomas, who isn't listed on your internet depth chart as a starter, but who Brett Venables will play for a ton of snaps, possibly more than Austin Bryant, who is "listed" ahead of him.
It doesn't matter what a piece of paper says, what matters is WHO ACTUALLY PLAYS.
If Notre Dame's young linebackers played, for example, I'd count them. But they don't. Drue Tranquill, Te'Von Coney and Asmar Bilal have taken almost every competitive snap on the season. That is not the case at Clemson. Their depth counts, because they actually play a lot, similarly to the way Notre Dame's defensive line depth counts, because they actually play a lot and make plays, which makes them a known quantity that any rational person can and should, account for. By your argument, if Daelin Hayes was a sophomore instead of a junior, he wouldn't count towards Notre Dame's youth, because Julian Okwara is listed ahead of him... Forget the fact that they rotate freely throughout the game and depending on what defensive package Notre Dame has on the field. Forget the fact that Brian Kelly doesn't even call one the "starter" because they rotate so heavily... Nope, Daelin doesn't count because a piece of paper says that Julian is the starter. That's the same argument you're making with the exception that you're using Clemson players and not Notre Dame players.
You're being completely unreasonable... If I told you that two players played at one position and one player got 55% of the snaps and the other player got 45% of the snaps, what you're telling me is that a reasonable response to that is "We only count the older guy who plays 55% of the snaps when evaluating a team. The young guy who plays 45% of the snaps is irrelevant to the assessment of the experience on the team."
That's completely ludicrous.
Clemson ACTIVELY plays, in their standard rotation, 14 true freshmen and sophomores. At least 7 of them play more minutes, or all of the minutes over upperclassmen at their position, while at least 4 more of them (I'd have to look deeper at the last 3) play a similar number of snaps as the starter.
So yes, we count 2-deep players when they actually play significant roles. That's why I keep telling you there is a difference between a paper depth chart that gets uploaded to the internet so you can Google search it, and a functional depth chart, which you only learn by evaluating snap counts and actually watching film of the team you are talking about, so you can see who plays and who doesn't, regardless of what the piece of paper says.
My suggestion to you would be to watch Clemson film this week leading up to the game. You'll see exactly what I'm telling you. They play up to 14 freshmen and sophomores in regular rotation on offense and defense, vs the 8 that Notre Dame play... Even if we just talked about the starters, Clemson starts 6/7 freshmen and sophomores to Notre Dame's 1... That makes them 6-7x younger than Notre Dame in an upper vs lower classmen comparison. That is significant relative to experience. Notre Dame is banking on that experience and maturity. Clemson is banking on the fact that in almost all of those cases those kids were 5 star freaks as recruits and they can overcome ND's experience and development, with raw talent.
