The fairly seismic quarterback developments of the past two weeks made the mind drift back to the 2017 playoff when Clemson and Alabama were playing in the New Orleans semifinal.

About an hour before the game, I hopped on an elevator to go from the field up to the press box and was chatting up an Alabama writer.

"Tua is going to play tonight," he said.

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Turned out Tua didn't play, but that didn't mean the information wasn't good.

We all later learned that Nick Saban entered that game fully prepared to go with Tagovailoa over Jalen Hurts, who had struggled late in the season and bottomed out in a loss at Auburn.

Clemson just wasn't good enough on offense to force his hand, and he ended up going with the freshman not long thereafter in a sequence no one needs refreshing on.

Saban's handling of it that year reinforces the difficult and delicate nature of such a quandary. If Georgia doesn't bust its coverage on second-and-26 that night in the national championship, odds are high that Alabama fans spend the rest of eternity wondering why Saban didn't put him in earlier.

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Based on the evidence Cade Klubnik supplied in Charlotte, maybe the time for Dabo Swinney and Brandon Streeter to go fully with him was to start the second half at Notre Dame instead of that bad spot inside his own 5-yard line.