On Saturday, Alabama entered an alternate universe, a football fifth dimension of sorts. It was a world where the Crimson Tide didn’t defend a pass until the fourth quarter, surrendered rushing yards in bulk and experienced the weird feeling of being tied at halftime.
Gasp!
“It was hard,” linebacker Mack Wilson said, “because it was stuff we have never seen before.”
The Alabama fans who attended the Crimson Tide’s 50-17 victory over The Citadel at Bryant-Denny Stadium could empathize.
They witnessed a team from a lower division challenge college football’s most powerful program for more than 30 minutes of game action.
They saw Dante Smith (who?) race to the end zone on a 45-yard run early in the second quarter to forge a deadlock and produce the first points against Alabama’s vaunted defense since a first-half Tennessee touchdown back on Oct. 20.
They looked on with confusion as The Citadel’s Wishbone attack carved up their beloved Tide, producing 275 yards and paving the way to three scores after Alabama hadn’t allowed any in its previous two games against ranked SEC opponents.
“This is so unique to have to play this in this day and age,” Alabama coach Nick Saban acknowledged. “It has very little carryover with anything that you do prior to the game, and it will have very little carryover beyond this game.”
Saban had to dust off his old football teaching manuals this past week to prepare his team for the triple-option — a scheme Alabama hadn’t seen in seven years, when another FCS opponent, Georgia Southern, gained 302 yards on the ground and prompted the Tide’s coach to later say the Eagles ran through his defense like “shit through a tin horn.”
In the aftermath of the game Saturday, Saban wasn’t nearly as fiery. Instead, he offered a more technical explanation of why The Citadel experienced success against the mighty machine of Alabama.
“The ball moves, the point of the attack moves throughout the play,” he said. “Does the dive guy get it? Does the quarterback keep it? Is there a pitch guy? And there are multiple blocking schemes, whether it’s trap option, lead option, zone option, load option, which affects the run fit for the perimeter as well as the inside-out players. It’s completely different than what you normally see and what players are accustomed to playing.”
Alabama instant analysis: After brief scare, Crimson Tide routs The Citadel
For Anfernee Jennings — an edge-setting specialist — it was certainly peculiar. He rarely had a pocket to invade, but plenty of tackles to make — a team-high 11 to be exact.
“It was kind of strange,” said Jennings who scored on a fumble recovery. “But we knew going into the game they were 92 percent run offense. We had to be on our Ps and Qs.”
They also had to be conscious of the cut-blocking that accompanied The Citadel’s 60 rush attempts. Saban objected to it and his players were wary of the tactic in which the Bulldogs’ offensive linemen tried to impede the defenders’ progress by going for their knees.
“It was definitely terrible,” Wilson said. “The first couple of possessions we were frustrated.”
By then, The Citadel had accrued some momentum.
On the Bulldogs’ first three drives, they gained 118 yards and picked up five first downs before Smith made his 45-yard dash to the end zone.
Alabama was stunned.
The shock persisted through halftime after Jacob Godek made a 48-yard field goal at the end of the second quarter to tie the score at 10.
“You’re talking about a team that doesn’t have any players maybe on their team that can play for our team,” Saban said. “And yet we’re not beating them. We’re not dominating them at the line of scrimmage. We’re not finishing. We’re not playing to our standard.”
But in the second half Alabama reentered a world that was more familiar — one where the Tide scores in bulk and makes defensive stops on the regular. The Citadel, meanwhile, lost its mojo, failing to gain any traction on five straight possessions as the Tide seized control of the game.
There was a return to normalcy — or so it seemed.
In the postgame news conference, Saban offered yet another curveball, as he not only refrained from criticizing his defense but instead praised a unit responsible for yielding its highest total of rushing yards this season.
“The one thing I was really pleased with was the way the defensive players took the challenge to try to play this offense,” he said.
Huh?
A strange day in Tuscaloosa, indeed.
Rainer Sabin is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin
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