How Alabama turned around a disastrous season and ended up in the College Football Playoff

If you were looking for the low point of Nick Saban’s entire career at Alabama, you’d probably start in the bowels of Raymond James Stadium in Tampa back on Sept. 16. There, as a lightning delay halted play for more than an hour, Nick Saban, soaked and seething, walked back to the locker room in the midst of a team that was Alabama in name only.

The Tide was losing – 3-0, yes, but still, losing — to the University of South Florida, a team they’d been favored to beat by five touchdowns. Alabama was already coming off its worst home loss in the Saban era, a double-digit throttling at the hands of a Texas team that looked larger, faster, sharper, more disciplined, more motivated — a whole lot like Alabama once did. And now, this atrocity.

On that September afternoon, not even the few Alabama fans at the stadium who could still muster up the energy for a Roll Tide would have expected anything out of this team. Two losses on the season seemed inevitable, three a strong possibility, and a dynasty-shattering four wasn’t out of the question.

Since that grim moment under the stands, though, Alabama hasn’t lost once. The Tide have thrived against the usurper Georgia, survived against rival Auburn, and enjoyed the good graces of the College Football Playoff selection committee. From a team everyone outside Tuscaloosa happily left for dead back in September, Alabama is now within a hairsbreadth of being the betting favorite to win yet another title.

How did the turnaround happen? Were the reports of the dynasty’s death greatly exaggerated? Is this Saban’s greatest coaching job ever? Or is this just Bama being its usual, unstoppable, inevitable self?

Was this season Nick Saban’s best coaching job yet? (Henry Russell/Yahoo Sports)

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2023-12-28 16:37:58

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