The Tide Rolls

With the nation watching, Alabama puts its foot down

By Chris Landers 

Hey, remember Alabama?

It may seem absurd to refer to a back-to-back national champion as flying under the radar, but as the calendar turned to November college football’s greatest dynasty was in shocking need of a PR guy. The Tide hadn’t done anything wrong, really — the only thing they were guilty of is quietly throttling inferior competition over the last few weeks, while the mile-a-minute news cycle of the Twitter age moved on to that week’s Game of the Century.

As Florida State continued to roll (seriously, someone needs to send out a search party for the entire Wake Forest program) and teams like Stanford and Baylor made their BCS run, there were some cries that, hey, maybe we had anointed Alabama too early. After surviving the Johnny Football blitzkrieg early in the year, the Tide had sleepwalked through the underbelly of the SEC — an underbelly weaker than in years past — and voters and media was starting to get a bit antsy. Was this really the number one team in the country? Are they unproven? We hadn’t seen them in a while, so we figured maybe, just maybe, we had crowned them prematurely.

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But then Saturday night rolled around, the nation with its eyes on Tuscaloosa for the first time in a while, and as they always seem to do this time of year Alabama made a statement. It wasn’t flashy — Nick Saban rarely ever is — but it was beautiful, and it was dominant. LSU was more than game, led by Most Improved Player candidate Zach Mettenberger dealing at quarterback. And who knows, if the Tigers hadn’t fumbled twice in the first half — spotting the Tide a 3-0 lead when they should have been down by at least a touchdown — things may have turned out differently.

But those What Ifs miss the point entirely: Alabama is as good as ever, the Saban machine simply reloading one more time. Once LSU missed its window of opportunity, the Tide slammed it shut with authority. They got after Mettenberger and completely shut down the Tigers’ three-headed monster at running back, and once the game was tied at 17 early in the third, the offensive line went to work.

It should be said that this isn’t your father’s (or even your older brother’s) LSU defense. They’re young, and a bit smaller and softer in the trenches than in years past. That still doesn’t remove the shine from what the Tide did to them up front, though, which was nothing short of a mauling. TJ Yeldon and Kenyan Drake, the next five-star recruits in a long line of two-headed backfield monsters for Alabama, had a field day in the second half. The Tide didn’t so much beat LSU as they took their will, one deflating eight-yard run after another. Before we knew it, there was one touchdown, and another, and all of a sudden another nail-biter had turned into a romp.

This is how Alabama does business, for better or worse. They aren’t Oregon, and they’re not going to hang 50 in the first half or average 12 yards per play. They’re just going to beat you, badly, over and over again, more a force of inexorable will than a football team. So we’ll keep questioning them, once the next 34-7 slog over Colorado State rolls around, but we’d do well to remember nights like Saturday. Because until somebody takes it from them, the Crimson Tide are the kings of college football.