TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Here we are back to normal, easing into the comfortable yet crushing reality that it’s Alabama’s college football world again.
Like it or not.
“We’ve found our groove,” said Alabama tackle Cam Robinson.
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You didn’t really think they’d just go away, did you? Not after that giveaway to Ole Miss, or the sleepwalk against Arkansas or the near trip against Tennessee.
Not after it was easy to write them off and easier to sit back and revel in the fall of a champion. Not after it became so temptingly trendy to envision a championship race without all things Tide suffocating the moment.
Then it happened, this very game that Tide coach Nick Saban needed to see to believe. It may have taken two months, but there’s little doubt who the team to beat is yet again.
Alabama’s thundering 30-16 victory over LSU was as revealing as it was emphatic: the team that dominated the sport from 2009-2012 has a stranglehold on it again.
The new boss is the same as he old boss. Deal with it, America.
“Our guys did everything we asked them to do,” Saban said.
Think about that for a moment: the team with the best players, best coaches, best support staff to win, did everything they were supposed to do. Guess what happened?
Alabama, the Crimson Vader of the sport, found itself, humiliated a rival and buried the biggest college football story of the season in all of 60 minutes. One walloping gut punch to LSU’s SEC and College Football Playoff hopes, and a brutal kneecap of the growing legend of Leonard Fournette.
“We were sick of hearing about him,” said Tide linebacker Reggie Ragland. “So we went out and did something about it.”
If we take nothing else from this game, we should embrace this: the one player who captured the attention of the college and professional game — one NFL scout said Fournette, LSU star tailback, could start for all but a handful of pro teams right now — was reduced to an absolute afterthought.
The entire game; Alabama’s most dominating performance since crushing Notre Dame to win the 2012 BCS National Championship, was tied to Fournette and his impact on the game and the season.
He was hip and fresh; Alabama was bland and boring. He was dynamic and exciting; Alabama was worn and tired.
By the time it as over; by the time Alabama ran off the final 10 minutes of the game by stuffing the ball down the throat of one of the best defenses in the game and dominating both lines of scrimmage like no one has against LSU under coach Les Miles, the reclamation was complete. Fournette, who was averaging nearly 200 yards a game, had 31 lousy yards on 19 carries.
Alabama, meanwhile, was back on top of the SEC West Division (thanks, in part, to an Ole Miss loss to Arkansas) and in control of its destiny to return to the College Football Playoff where the idea that the Tide no longer are what they once were first began 10 months ago in a semifinal loss to Ohio State.
That game ended with legitimate questions about Alabama bailing too soon on its vaunted running game. This game ended with tailback Derrick Henry carrying 11 times for 78 yards when the Tide ran off the final 9:18.
Henry finished with 210 yards and three touchdowns on 38 carries, the painstakingly perfect microcosm of a team finding itself by doing what it does best: run the ball and play defense.
“We weren’t out to prove anything,” Henry said. “We were out to win a game.”
So dominant and so complete was this game that, at one point early in the fourth quarter, after Alabama had taken a 30-10 lead, Fournette — the player whose game and magnetic personality had captivated the sport — had 15 carries for 13 yards.
The only thing that remained at that point was a simple lingering question: what took so long? Why did it take the team that wins every recruiting national championship and has better personnel than any other team in the nation, so long to translate it all to the field?
Too often this fall Alabama played disinterested and disengaged, its ferocious and freaky potential bottled up by its own doing. Don’t blame quarterback Jake Coker; he completed more than 70 percent of his passes the previous four games and played well again against LSU.
Don’t blame Henry, either; he has carried this team for stretches at a time and has been the one guy Alabama could turn to when it needed a big play. If we have to point the finger somewhere, it’s at Alabama’s biggest strength: the defense.
“We wanted to go out and play our best game,” said Tide linebacker Dillon Lee. “Everyone play in your box and do your job, and then we’ll see just how well we can play together.”
For the first time this season, Alabama played a complete game where it has built its reputation under Saban for the last decade. The Tide has played much of this season with a top 10 (statistically) unit, but hadn’t put together a defining game or a complete performance.
The front four has been fantastic and the front seven stout against the run. But the secondary — the weak link in the loss to Ole Miss, and the problem for much of the season because of problems winning individual battles and losing too many receivers in coverage — played nearly flawless against LSU.
The most telling stat in a game full of them: LSU ran 45 plays on 12 drives. That’s less than four plays per drive.
“I told our guys in the locker room, that’s how you play defense,” Ragland said.
That’s how you find your way back to the nation’s elite; how you bow up and make a punishing statement and let everyone know who they’re chasing.
Like it or not.