Alabama defense coming alive at the perfect time for Crimson Tide
By John Buhler
The Alabama Crimson Tide shut out the Mississippi State Bulldogs on Saturday. That’s nine quarters of scoreless football in a row. This defense is awesome.
Another Saturday, another dominating performance by the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide down south. Alabama had arguably its toughest challenge of the season in facing the division rival No. 16 Mississippi State Bulldogs on Saturday afternoon.
However, the result was largely the same. Alabama pitched another shut out, thwarting Joe Moorhead’s Mississippi Tate offense all afternoon. Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald couldn’t get anything going in his final game versus Alabama. The Crimson Tide pitched its second consecutive shutout, beating the Bulldogs by the tune of 24-0 to improve to 10-0 (7-0) on the season.
Even more impressive, the Crimson Tide have now held the opposition scoreless in nine straight quarters. They shut out the LSU Tigers on the road in Baton Rouge last week when the Bayou Bengals were the No. 3 team in the nation.
Alabama might have surrendered points versus the Tennessee Volunteers a few weeks ago, but kept Jeremy Pruitt’s bunch scoreless in the fourth quarter during the Third Saturday in October. With The Citadel next week, look for that scoreless streak to continue into double digits. So what is getting into this Alabama defense of late?
Well, the Crimson Tide have held both LSU and Mississippi State to under 200 yards of total offense in the last two weeks. Both SEC West rivals have been poor on third-down conversions. LSU might have been 5-16 last week at home, but Mississippi State was only 1-13 on third down and 0-2 on fourth down versus the vaunted Alabama defense on Saturday.
We know the pass rush is good and the secondary is always good with Nick Saban calling the shots. But was has been very key to Alabama’s success in recent weeks defensively has been the Crimson Tide’s ability to stop the run.
Alabama has allowed fewer than 100 yards rushing in its last four SEC games. The last time Alabama gave up over 100 yards on the ground, it was in a high-scoring affair versus the division rival Arkansas Razorbacks. The Crimson Tide won that game 65-31 on the road versus the Hogs. It should be noted that Alabama hasn’t allowed more than 70 yards on the ground since beating the Missouri Tigers in the middle of October.
To put it simply, Alabama remains dominant in pass defense and in the pass rush. The big key of late has been the Crimson Tide’s ability to stuff the run. Sure, it helps that the offense has been an absolute buzz saw, which leads to the Crimson Tide getting early leads, never relinquishing them and forcing the opposition into compromised passing situations.
With playmakers like Quinnen Williams, Dylan Moses, Anfernee Jennings, Mack Wilson, Raekwon Davis and Patrick Surtain Jr., it’s easy to see why Alabama continues to whoop the opposition with its defensive prowess.
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This defense is good enough to get Alabama back to the National Championship for the fourth year in a row. However, it is Tua Tagovailoa and the offense that will win Alabama back-to-back national titles.