Tide makes a statement...
So much for the hurry up offense of Ole Miss

 

Bama puts the icing on the cake

    The regular football season is now one-fourth complete. It has indeed been curious crimson quarter.  It is not surprising that Alabama is 4-0. Most fans expected that to happen.  The road to a perfect start had been marked by imperfections.  Despite those three victories against Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and Colorado State,  those wins opened up more questions than answers to Tide fans and the coaching staff. Where was Alabama team that imposed their will on opponents?  An opposing team simply cannot score 42 points against the Crimson Tide.  A Nick Saban coached team does not struggle to run the ball. An Alabama offense does not have to fight for their lives on third down.  In past seasons if  Alabama even had a third down it was a foregone conclusion that first down was just a play away.   Now,  third down became an almost lost cause.  Sure, they might be 3-0 but they were without a doubt the worst #1 ranked team in college history.  It seemed that the national media, and a lot of Tide fans, were waiting for the other shoe to drop. The national talking heads  were tired of  SEC supremacy,  and an Alabama loss would drop the team lower than a rock thrown in a deep lake.  You could almost hear the digital masses licking their chops for the loss which seemed inevitable. 


Tide turns the page... 
   

Against a cocky Ole Miss team led by a boastful quarterback, the Tide decided to change the talking points.  Alabama played like they were outrunning demons. In the end Ole Miss had scored no points. Alabama scored 25. Between the  25 and the zero a lot of questions were finally answered. If Alabama wins another national championship early next year , the Ole Miss game may be remembered as the night the team found an identity.  The defense shut down and then shut out an explosive Rebel team that had averaged 490 yards a game. The Tide defense finished  the game better than Mariano Rivera.  For the night Ole Miss had only 205 total yards.  A team averaging 27 first downs per game was held to a mere 11.  Alabama competed, dominated, and then embarrassed the Rebels. The ultimate humiliation for any offense is to give up a safety.  Bo Wallace being tackled in his own end zone was a final indignity to an offense that had more than met its match. 

    

    Once again Tuscaloosa becomes a kind of football gulag where dreams go to die. Ole Miss is better. Better isn't good enough to beat Alabama. This game shows the clear gap between Alabama and the rest of the SEC.  None of this means that Alabama will win the national championship. I'm not sure it even means the Tide will win every SEC game they play this season. It does mean that the road to any SEC championship has to go through west Alabama. This may not be the greatest Alabama football in the Saban era. The obvious point is that achieving the goals Alabama has set since the 1920's can be attained without a 'greatest' type team. In an era where scholarship reductions are supposed to equalize competition the opposite has happened. Everyone has good talent. Almost every team has a couple of great players. Not every team has Nick Saban. I admire what Hugh Freeze is trying to do in Oxford. Ole Miss is going to get better. They may  get a whole lot better. But Ole Miss, or any other team in the SEC, will never be Alabama and Nick Saban great.  Some things never change. It's Alabama and likely to be Alabama for a long time. Perhaps the saying we should use about Alabama football is "even the bad times are good, the good times are great, and the great times usual at 'Bama."