If what already has transpired this season wasn’t proof enough, the inevitable in the SEC Championship Game should bring it home without hesitation.
Alabama has played one team this season that can throw the ball. And lost.
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As defining as Saturday’s 29-15 victory over Florida was, it also underscored the blaring reality that the Tide will play against a complete team — one that can throw the ball and press on both offense and defense — in the College Football Playoff for the first time since a mid-September loss to Ole Miss.
Forget, for a moment, the deceptively dominant win over a Florida team that couldn’t throw the ball (or move the ball) since quarterback Will Grier was suspended early October by the NCAA.
Look at the Alabama schedule since that Ole Miss loss, and find a team that could force the Tide into difficult down-and-distance situations. I don’t care about where an opponent was ranked when the teams played, or what was once considered a big game.
Rankings, if we haven’t learned by now, are meaningless.
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Since the loss to Ole Miss, Alabama has run off a string of victories over Louisiana-Monroe, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas A&M, Tennessee, LSU, Mississippi State, Charleston Southern, Auburn and Florida. Of that group, only Tennessee had the ability to, intermittently, press the Tide on both sides of the ball.
And that game (in Tuscaloosa) ended with Alabama quarterback Jake Coker making two big throws — two key catches from Calvin Ridley and ArDarius Stewart — on the game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter.
None of those aforementioned teams can throw the ball (and protect the quarterback) with any semblance of consistency, thereby failing to expose the Tide’s most glaring weakness: inconsistent coverage in the back end. Not to be overlooked: Alabama survived and advanced to the SEC Championship Game because a fluke Arkansas lateral kept Ole Miss from the championship game of a conference that hasn’t been this bad, this thin from top to bottom, since the early 2000s.
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Make no mistake, the Tide are terrific on defense stopping the run, forcing teams into predictable situations and thriving in them. Derrick Henry can move the pile and wear down defenses — especially when the offenses of those teams can’t move the ball and keep their gutted defenses off the field.
It’s a vicious cycle that has fueled Alabama to this point. But it all changes later this month against Oklahoma or Clemson or Michigan State — teams that can press you on both sides of the field, and teams that can throw the ball and expose the Tide secondary.
The first back-to-back championships in the SEC since the late 1990s is impressive, Alabama.
The real season begins on New Year’s Eve.