Alabama’s special teams burn Clemson

Monday night football’s college championship game was a back-and-forth battle between the two teams. Against the advice of Florida coach Jim McElwain, who said in December that opponents must always break tendency to stand a chance against Saban’s Tide, Clemson lined up the same way every time. Voters no longer have the excuse of “Well, Stanford’s games are on too late”.

So now that Saban has joined Bear Bryant as the only college football coaches with at least five national titles, does he walk away from coaching Alabama? “It scares me to ever think of the day when I wouldn’t be a part of the team”. It’s always about the next game.

So I replied: Really?

That’s where most of my appreciation lies, with the players. “It won’t be 34 years before we’re going to be back, I promise you that”.

Dual-threat quarterbacks give most defenses trouble and Alabama is no exception. Urban made a big deal out of it a year ago, and it was probably an issue considering the refreshed way the Crimson Tide looked against the Spartans.

With most of the defensive line huffing and puffing from the Tigers’ uptempo attack, all Alabama did was rotate in defensive end Da’Shawn Hand.

Clemson also has the best quarterback in the country, who torched Alabama’s defense for 405 passing yards and four touchdowns, as well as 73 rushing yards. Keep an eye on Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer, Oregon running back Royce Freeman and Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett.

There’s depth, and there’s Alabama depth. That is the nagging question for the rest of college football.

Then there’s the hardware to go with that. “We just had three critical errors where we just didn’t do our job”. Heisman Trophy victor Derrick Henry hasn’t declared that he will skip his senior year and enter the 2016 National Football League draft, but that seems like a fait accompli.

Beyond Smart, the Crimson Tide will sustain heavy losses.

Alabama did that and it’s a tribute to Saban’s attention to detail.

The only hole, if you want to call it that, is the fact that no defensive back (Saban’s coaching specialty) has won the Thorpe Award. “But I can tell you that there was not one time that he ever complained about it and not one time did he ever not go out there and do exactly what the coach asked him to do, even when he wasn’t catching a lot of passes or scoring a lot of touchdowns”. Sitting at the winning coach’s podium alongside tight end O.J. Howard, the offensive MVP who led both teams with five receptions for 208 yards and two touchdowns, Saban acknowledged he made a mistake.

But I can’t really talk to you much more about the perspective and the significance of this, because moving forward, it doesn’t really mean a lot. Pruitt won a national title in Tallahassee and then spent the past two seasons serving as Georgia’s defensive coordinator. Coker took a knee and after a two-year drought that felt like eternity in Tuscaloosa, Alabama was back on top.

Of the first 506 voters in the poll, 351 picked Paterno as college football’s greatest coach.

Many within the industry believe the next stop for ol’ Nick is College GameDay or a similar broadcasting gig, not a different sideline.

One thing is clear: this year’s decision to host the semifinal games on New Year’s Eve, before three other major but essentially meaningless bowl games the following day, was an unmitigated flop for everyone involved. The problem with standing on the mountaintop for so long however, as he has done, is that there is nothing left to climb. Then he’ll try to wrap up another top recruiting class. Eventually, he will erase all doubt left for the non-believers. But coaches such as Saban would push back on that idea, and the four-team bracket maintains the importance of the regular season while satisfying the public wish for a playoff.