Jan 5, 2022

  • Dave WilsonESPN Staff Writer

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      Dave Wilson is an editor for ESPN.com since 2010. He previously worked at The Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.

When Cincinnati got its shot to take on a heavyweight, facing Alabama in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, the Bearcats' star corners, Ahmad "Sauce" Gardner and Coby Bryant, were eager to evidence they could match up against the Tide's Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, Bryce Young, and wide receiver Jameson Williams, considered the acme NFL typhoon prospect at the position in college football.

So eager, in fact, that the Bearcats won the coin toss and elected to defer, allowing Alabama to take the ball first.

Very apace, things went amiss as Cincinnati learned a lesson. Yous don't pick your poisonous substance confronting Alabama; the poison picks you.

Alabama ran the ball on 10 of the eleven plays on the outset drive of the game, with the one pass existence an 8-thou touchdown toss to Slade Bolden. That set the tone for the day, every bit running back Brian Robinson Jr. had 134 yards in the first half, more than he had in 10 of 12 consummate games this season. Immature finished with his lowest passing total of the season -- 181 yards on 17-of-28 passing. Williams caught seven passes for 62 yards and averaged only 8.ix yards per reception, also a flavour low. Simply information technology didn't matter. By the time Alabama had wrapped up a 27-six drubbing, Robinson had a career-loftier 204 yards, an Alabama basin record.

"I didn't expect the running brawl that much," Gardner said after the game. "I don't know what we could accept done. We did what we prepared to do, as far as the way nosotros ran our defense. Hats off to them. They had a great O-line, great backs. And they showed that."

And that's the problem when facing Nick Saban's Alabama teams. As good equally Cincinnati was against the Tide'due south stars, others adjusted to set a school rushing tape, no pocket-size feat in a program with Alabama's history of running backs. Taking on the Tide is like playing whack-a-mole. Hold the Heisman winner and the star wideout in cheque and there are five-star players everywhere else who get their plow to brand history.

That's the conundrum facing Georgia coach Kirby Smart, a former Saban defensive coordinator, who is on a mission to end the Bulldogs' 41-year title drought at his alma mater when Georgia faces Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship in Indianapolis (Mon, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN App).

Smart knows better than anyone to expect the unexpected against Alabama. He'southward 0-4 when facing his onetime boss, and well-nigh of those losses accept come in the almost painful fashion, including a 41-24 loss in the SEC title game Dec. iv afterward beingness ranked No. 1 for most of the season.

The final time Georgia faced Alabama in the CFP National Championship game, in January 2018, Saban benched starting quarterback Jalen Hurts in favor of Tua Tagovailoa, who sparked a Tide rally by going 14-of-24 with 166 yards and three touchdowns in the second half, erasing a xiii-bespeak deficit to win in overtime, 26-23. The side by side season, in the 2018 SEC title game, Saban brought Hurts in to replace an injured Tagovailoa in the fourth quarter and watched him lead Alabama on a 16-play, 80-chiliad bulldoze to tie the score and then add together a fifteen-grand touchdown run with ane:04 left for a 35-28 win over the Dawgs.

Like Smart, Kevin Steele is familiar with life in the SEC -- and Saban'south operation, in item -- from inside and out.

Steele, whose coaching career began in 1980 at Tennessee, was defensive coordinator for Saban'due south first Alabama teams in 2007 and 2008 before departing for Clemson, where he worked for Dabo Swinney until 2011. He returned to Alabama in an off-field role as the managing director of player personnel in 2013 and coached the Tide'south linebackers in 2014. He was LSU'due south defensive coordinator in 2015 and Auburn's DC from 2016 to 2020, a stretch in which he helped Auburn beat Bama twice in v seasons.

"There were and so many weapons on the field that whatsoever y'all tried to take abroad, [Alabama] would instantly assault you lot with some other weapon at your weakness," Steele said. "A lot of that is tied to talent acquisition. But Charabanc [Saban] is really, really good -- perhaps the best -- at saying, 'OK, this is what we need to exercise to win the game.' And information technology factors into a lot of things. It's a cute game that never unfolds like you call up it'due south going to."

Michigan State felt the Bearcats' pain in 2015, Alabama's last New year's Eve visit to a Cotton Bowl. That season, Derrick Henry set a unmarried-season SEC record with 1,986 yards rushing for the Tide, breaking Herschel Walker's 1981 record, and his 23 touchdowns tied a league tape shared past Florida'due south Tim Tebow and Auburn's Tre Mason.

Henry was 2nd in the nation in carries going into the matchup, including 90 in Alabama's previous two games -- 46 against Auburn and 44 confronting Florida -- for 460 yards.

"We are going to accept to hit him harder -- harder than we've ever hit anyone else," Michigan State linebacker Jon Reschke said the week of the game. "It's a challenge we are accepting."

All indications were that information technology was going to be a slugfest. Saban praised how Michigan State closed the Big X title game with a 22-play, 82-yard drive to beat out Iowa.

"They had a big physical [running] back and a physical offensive line, and that's the way we endeavour to play and the fashion they try to play and that'due south the kind of football a lot of people enjoy watching," Saban said before the game. "It's going to be a great matchup from that standpoint."

The Spartans did their job, holding Henry to just 75 yards, an boilerplate of 3.8 yards on his 20 carries. Their reward? A 38-0 Alabama win in which the Spartans -- and a former Saban defensive coordinator, Mark Dantonio -- were soundly browbeaten. That matchup Saban mentioned never came close to materializing, just similar what Cincinnati discovered concluding week.

Alabama came out passing, and Henry didn't get a touch until the seventh offensive play of the game. Quarterback Jake Coker completed 25 of thirty passes for 286 yards and two touchdowns, establishing career highs in completions and yards. Calvin Ridley, and so a freshman, caught viii passes for 138 yards and 2 touchdowns after having caught just five TD passes in the flavour's previous 13 games.

Michigan State had no answer for the Tide's air set on, but Alabama didn't fifty-fifty have to go along slinging it, holding the Spartans to just 239 total yards, including 1.1 yards per rush attempt.

Steele said Saban's game plans can vary wildly on defense, besides, although it's non every bit apparent.

"Everybody knows the offense. Everybody knows the screen and draw and a post," Steele said. "But most have no idea between a fire zone trap and 2-deep zone coverage. Simply it's the same thing on defense. There'south games where they pressured more to win the game. And and so there's games where they didn't take whatever pressure at all."

Since Lane Kiffin helped Saban modernize his offense, including in that game confronting Michigan State, the Tide take get even more terrifying because any given play tin go one of several ways and make the most of the variety of talent on the field at any moment.

"Sometimes yous've got to have what the defense gives," Saban said after the Cincinnati game. "And a lot of these running plays had RPOs [run-laissez passer options] and passes fastened to them. I thought Bryce [Young] did a really good job of making good decisions and taking advantage of runs when we had them and a couple of advantage throws when we had them. When nosotros're the best, we can run it, but we can make plays in the passing game."

A perfect case: With ii:22 left in the starting time half on his own 19, Young dropped back to pass until protection broke downwards. And so he easily pitched information technology to Robinson, who ran 23 yards before the first defender got a hand on him.

Three plays later, Young hit freshman receiver Ja'Corey Brooks, who had 79 yards all flavor, on a 44-1000 touchdown strike to put Alabama up 17-three on the Bearcats going into halftime.

"They schemed us up good," Cincinnati linebacker Darrian Beavers said. "We tried to brand some adjustments, tried to slow them downward, but it'southward merely a really proficient squad."

Given these examples, Georgia won't take much comfort in knowing it has already faced Alabama this twelvemonth. LSU establish that out, too. In 2011, the Tigers shell Alabama ix-6 in Tuscaloosa, holding the Tide to 3.one yards per carry while averaging 3.6 in an onetime-school SEC boxing of the trenches. The two teams met once more in the BCS championship game two months after, with Alabama holding LSU to one.4 yards per acquit while averaging four.3 in a 21-0 win.

Steele said yous can report as much as you desire for a rematch similar this one, but you'll notwithstanding have to be ready to adjust.

"Every piece of motion picture comes into play," he said. "It'll be a different fight. If they got hitting in the face with the correct hand several times, they won't become striking with that right hand this time. So you've got to exist ready for the left hand. The talent level and the coaching is so skillful."

In other words, this is a heavyweight rematch and nobody knows what will happen until they become striking in the oral fissure, Steele said.

"It'll be a rare occasion that one of those teams gets vanquish in the same year, by the same team, doing the same thing the aforementioned mode."