or Clemson would have done better.
While I've joined in the post-mortem analyses and enjoyed reading them, the fact is if Alabama or Clemson would come up short at Georgia - and there's good reason to think they would, too - there would be plenty of bemoaning of their weaknesses and failures, too. Any team that loses any game, by definition, had shortcomings.
Maybe ND is a lot closer to elite than we think.