TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — He could coach forever and nothing could top this. Not another game, not another season, not another championship.
Try to wrap your mind around this, everyone: with his program full of self-doubt after the way 2013 ended, Nick Saban put his team in the hands of a pariah of a coach and a quarterback not even he wanted.
And the damn thing worked.
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“We haven’t played a whole lot of games around here where we give up 44 points and win,” Saban said.
Therein lies the beautiful dichotomy with this Alabama team. As un-Saban as it looks, it’s Saban’s best coaching job of all.
Of all the seasons and all the championships and all the fantastic football that has played out at Alabama under Saban, none has been more impressive than what he has molded this fall.
His best coaching job, his artwork of a sculpture of finding the right players and massaging the right egos and pushing the right motivational buttons, played out in — wouldn’t you just know it — the biggest game of the season with everything on the line.
The SEC Championship, the national championship — this season of redemption — all hanging in the balance. And all still within reach after a thrilling 55-44 victory over Auburn that, if it did nothing else, restored order in the state Alabama.
For a year, anyway.
“We owed these guys,” said Alabama safety Landon Collins.
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Now get this: two guys who had absolutely nothing to do with the way Auburn broke hearts all over the state last fall were the two most important figures this time around.
Blake Sims didn’t play a snap in last year’s Auburn win, and Lane Kiffin was two months removed from getting fired as the USC coach. By the end of this edition of the Iron Bowl, Sims had accounted for five touchdowns and Kiffin was the reason Alabama escaped a game it would’ve lost last season.
Alabama doesn’t win a big game last year if its quarterback throws three interceptions and the defense gives up 33 points three minutes into the third quarter. It’s not the way this program has been built; it’s not part of Saban’s famed process.
“It’s kind of where college football is moving offensively,” Saban said. “Every once in a while, you’re going to have to win these type of games.”
The foundation for this one began in January, when Saban did the unexpected at best, the unthinkable at worst: he hired Kiffin as offensive coordinator. The dynamics of the hire were as baffling as they were brilliant.
Kiffin has soiled every program (college or NFL) he has touched, yet he also, unquestionably, is one of the game’s best quarterback coaches and play callers. The Tide roster was full of inexperience at the most important position on the field, so the offensive coordinator hire was critical.
If anyone could keep Kiffin in line; if anyone could keep the Kiffin nonsense of years past filtering through The Process, it was the beautiful megalomaniac that is Nick Saban. Kiffin, in turn, has developed Sims — who at one point last year was playing tailback because he wasn’t going to see the field at quarterback — into the most valuable player in the SEC.
Don’t kid yourself: Alabama isn’t where it is this fall without Sims playing quarterback (remember that Jacob Coker talk in the offseason?) and without Kiffin’s coaching, developing and play calling week after week.
“It’s good to have a coach who tells me when I’m doing the wrong thing,” Sims said. “Then tells me how we’re going to fix it.”
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There they were Saturday night, after Sims threw his third interception, and after Auburn went up by 12 early in the third quarter, staring at each other again on the sidelines with 105,000 at Bryant-Denny Stadium preparing for the possibility of losing again to Auburn.
Calm down, go through your progression, follow the game plan. Here’s how it’s going to work and what we’re going to do to make it happen.
“(Kiffin) always has a play, a way to score points, an idea to make the offense successful,” said Alabama wideout Amari Cooper.
It should come as no coincidence that this idea focused on getting the ball into the hands of Cooper, the best player on the field. Kiffin moved Cooper around in different sets, playing him outside and in the slot to get matchup advantages.
He used Cooper as a decoy and used him as the main target, and when it was all done, Sims completed 10-of-12 passes for 180 yards and three touchdowns after throwing that third interception.
Blake Sims accounted for five TDs, including this one on the ground vs. Auburn. (Getty Images)
The first of those scores — a classic Kiffin schematic decision of moving Cooper to the slot — was so perfect, Kiffin actually raised his hands for a touchdown sign as Cooper was running out of his break, before the ball was thrown. He saw the coverage, knew Cooper would be open and knew Sims would get it to him.
That 39-yard touchdown pass was followed by a perfectly-thrown 75-yard deep ball to Cooper — “I told Lane, let’s see if they can cover us deep,” Saban said — followed by an 11-yard touchdown run by Sims that gave Alabama its first lead since the second quarter.
Sims’ last touchdown of the game was another Kiffin classic scheme move: using Cooper as a decoy to draw coverage to the middle of the field while Sims rolled out and threw to an open DeAndrew White in the back of the end zone that ended any hope of another Auburn miracle in this series.
By the end of the second half adjustments, Cooper had 13 catches for 224 yards and three touchdowns — and Alabama had its redemption.
“From the day (Kiffin) got here, it has just been a different feeling,” Alabama offensive tackle Austin Shepherd. “He gives us this confidence that we can and will score whenever we need it.”
Minutes after Alabama moved one step closer to winning the SEC and advancing to the College Football Playoff, Kiffin jogged off the field and into the tunnel, not one delirious fan acknowledging him as he tossed his visor into the stands.
Sims ran through the same tunnel soon after, those same fans beside themselves for the player who saved Alabama’s season and returned the favor to hated Auburn. It wasn’t T.J. Yeldon, the talented tailback who Saban had to motivate and massage at the same time to keep him happy with the emergence of Derrick Henry.
It wasn’t Saban’s defense, which despite giving up a school-record 630 yards to Auburn, found a way to make big stops in the fourth quarter. The same unit that Saban has been tweaking and re-tweaking all season, trying to find the right combination in the now offense-heavy SEC.
It was the coach no one wanted and the player everyone forgot about.
"This wasn’t about last year,” Sims said. “We’re more excited about seeing where we can go this season.”
It doesn’t go anywhere without Sims and Kiffin. Who would’ve imagined that this time last year?
Nothing can top that. Not in three forevers.