Bama Routs Michigan State 38-0

This year’s Cotton Bowl is a match-up between Alabama’s brilliant head coach Nick Saban and Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio, who was defensive coordinator under Saban at Michigan State, and took over as head coach when Saban departed. On the field they wore T-shirts that read, “WON & NOT DONE” – with the ampersand replaced by a stylized Alabama “A”. Clemson defeated Oklahoma 37-17. Alabama won 38-0… The Tide lost in last year’s College Football Playoff to Ohio State, in large part because Buckeyes quarterback Cardale Jones and coach Urban Meyer managed to keep the Alabama defense perpetually off-balance.

And, boy, they both look impressive.

After being down 17-16 to the Sooners at the half, the Tigers dominated the 2nd half outscoring Oklahoma 21-0 to earn a spot in the College Football Playoff title game to be played January 11th in Arizona. The story of the game can be summed up in two words, though: Deshaun Watson.

What do the Crimson Tide need to do to end their national championship drought at two years – yes, that’s a drought by ‘Bama standards.

Now, he’s going against the greatest coach of this generation.

Connor Cook went 19/39 for 210 yards and two interceptions in his final game for the Spartans.

The Spartans trailed 10-0 late in the first half, but Cook pushed a drive into the red zone. And prior to the season starting pundit and fans really started talking about this team playing for the national title.

“I think there’s going to be a progression back to his normal workload”, Johnson said in conference call with reporters. “It was just a matter of when”.

In a statement responding to the complaint, Swinney said: “Players of any faith or no faith at all are welcome in our program”.

“Obviously, past year was everyone was so happy, everyone was on cloud nine”, Cook said. “It was we want to play well in this game, and I certainly think we did that”.

The Clemson offensive line none who were starters before this year know they have to fare better, even if there are questions whether they actually can. But Alabama has not only the strength but the speed to contain Watson and the Tigers’ skill players. The celebration at that point was pretty tame on the Alabama sideline. Oklahoma was favored in the Orange Bowl by 4 points.

They’re 32 passing yards away from becoming the ninth team to manage 4,000 passing yards and 3,000 rushing yards in the same season.

“As a unit”, Watson said, “it’s tough to beat us when we’re all on the same page and have each other’s back”. He was diagnosed with a sprained medial collateral ligament.

Howard never blinked about his blocking role during the last month of the regular season, which all goes back to Saban lauding this team’s disposition. Of course, Alabama is not just a one-dimensional team as QB Jacob Coker showed against Michigan State. Scoring grabs of 50 and 6 yards by Ridley were sandwiched around cornerback Cyrus Jones’ 57-yard punt-return touchdown. While this was a defensive performance, Coker completed 25 of his passes for 286 yards and threw two TD’s to Ridley.

“So we knew that we would have to throw the bubbles and the smokes and the outside perimeter stuff and try to get them blocked on the perimeter to be able to move the ball effectively”.

Henry carried the ball 20 times for 75 yards, he scored two touchdowns and his longest gain of the night was 14 yards but his team is moving forward to the next game. The front seven owned the line of scrimmage, living in the Spartans backfield and sacking Connor Cook four times. Coker guided the Crimson Tide offense for 440 yards of offense against a confused Spartan defense. It’s a seven-point underdog despite having a 14-0 record.

“It can only do great wonders for our state, our school and football team”, Ford said. “I guess it’s like asking a coach to talk about a whole game at halftime”, he said.