With Alabama's Iron Bowl revenge, SEC's playoff hopes remain strong
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Gus Malzahn's Auburn Tigers allowed the country to flirt with the concept of playoff chaos for a couple hours on Saturday night.
The offensive-minded coach once again flipped the traditionally defense-first Iron Bowl rivalry into his flavor of choice, resulting in a rivalry-record 99 total points, and his team held the lead heading into the half. After Alabama coach Nick Saban delivered what star receiver Amari Cooper described as a "short halftime speech," the Tigers exited the visitor's locker room and immediately forced a turnover and scored again, pushing the lead to 33-21. That was the end of the rope for chaos.
"We should have just kept the hammer down and just kept chugging away," Auburn running back Corey Grant said after the game. "But things change."
The top-ranked Crimson Tide (11-1), the last remaining hope for the Southeastern Conference in the four-team College Football Playoff, stepped on the gas and never looked back. Behind Cooper, who looks like a lock for the Heisman ceremony in New York City after torching the Auburn secondary and the Iron Bowl record book, Alabama's offense took a 12-point deficit and turned it into a 55-44 rout at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Before the Tigers scored a garbage-time touchdown and two-point conversion, Alabama finished off its rival with a punishing 34-3 run. First came Cooper on a post route that was predetermined to score the moment Auburn called in its coverage. Touchdown. Then came Cooper streaking 75 yards down the sidelines against Cover 3. Touchdown. Then Blake Sims and the running game started spreading the wealth: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. That stretch sealed Alabama's SEC West title in style and extended its home winning streak to 16 games. Auburn's oft-maligned defense -- it allowed an average of 39 points per game over the final six SEC games -- could not find an answer.
"Since I've been here, the emotion when we're down is always been, 'We can come back,'" said Cooper, who set Iron Bowl records with 13 catches, 224 yards and three touchdowns. "It's never too much for us."
Saban's statements mirrored that sentiment: "Somebody asked me, 'How would you characterize this team?' And I would say that they do a great job from a competitive character standpoint of always making plays in the game when they need to make them."
Similar declarations could be made about the SEC's modus operandi over the past nine seasons. These are the types of late-season stumbling blocks the league has continuously ducked and dodged during its run of title game appearances. Commissioner Mike Slive's league always finds itself standing, one way or another, when the dust settles.
The dust is settling on the '14 regular season. The SEC is still standing. It's balancing on one leg, but it's upright.
In 2013, when a top-ranked Alabama team's undefeated season was derailed in the final second of this rivalry game, it was a one-loss Auburn team that was there to rush past Missouri and into the national championship game. In 2012, both Alabama and Florida rebounded from early losses to sit at Nos. 2 and 3 when it was time for the BCS selection process. From 2009 to 2011, the SEC boasted an undefeated team at the end of the season. Urban Meyer's 2008 Florida team bounced back from its one-point loss to Ole Miss by running the table against a slate that included five top-25 teams. The '06 Gators followed a similar script.
Late-season losses have been rare for the league's top contenders, and when they did occur another conference member was there to pick up the slack.
The lone exception, of course, was the chaotic 2007 season that resulted in the first two-loss champion (LSU) of the modern era. Fortune met Les Miles in the second-to-last week that regular season, as Nos. 1 and 2 nationally (West Virginia, Missouri) stumbled, leaving a door open for the eventual SEC champions to leapfrog ACC champ Virginia Tech and idle Georgia and Kansas right before the final BCS rankings. Everything lined up. It lined up for seven more years after that.
Heading into a clash with Missouri in Atlanta -- a date that was prearranged before the points started raining down on Bryant-Denny Stadium, thanks to No. 4 Mississippi State falling in the Egg Bowl Saturday evening -- Alabama holds firmly to a top-four ranking with 365 days' worth of vengeance removed from its shoulders. With its win over No. 15 Auburn, the SEC's preeminent standard-bearer single-handedly kept the league alive and well in the College Football Playoff picture.
Six undefeated or one-loss teams sat behind the Crimson Tide with a decent shot at making the four-contender tourney entering this weekend's games: Florida State, Oregon, Mississippi State, TCU, Baylor and Ohio State. The margin for error was slim. Oregon and Ohio State (though the Buckeyes lost quarterback J.T. Barrett to injury) cruised into their conference title games against mediocre teams. Florida State, per the norm, reached the ACC title game unscathed after going into survival mode. Baylor survived a barnburner with Texas Tech and TCU was already in the Week 14 clubhouse after waxing Texas. Alabama's road map featured high-profile obstacles: Gus Malzahn, Nick Marshall, Sammie Coates and an offense that rarely sputters.
Mississippi State faltered, Alabama did not. The SEC once again dodged the potential knockout punch.
"We're gonna definitely be happy about it," Cooper said, "but this win's going to do nothing for us in the weeks ahead."
The Tigers were hovering around a real opportunity to throw a wrench into the equation, though. The next Tigers Saban's team comes across will be in a similar position next weekend. Where would a two-loss Alabama be in the playoff hunt? Where would a (gulp) two-loss SEC champion Missouri stand? Would the selection committee strongly consider excluding what the general consensus believes to be the top conference nationally in its inaugural playoff? A 34-3 run rendered those questions useless, at least until the Tide arrives in Atlanta, where it will likely need a win against that low-profile Missouri team that lost to Indiana, had its doors blown off against Georgia but still clawed its way to the SEC East title for the second straight season.
Here's how things line up moving forward: Ohio State, likely featuring third-string quarterback Cardale Jones, moves on to play a surging Melvin Gordon and the 14th-ranked Wisconsin Badgers, Florida State faces what could very well be another closely contested game against No. 16 Georgia Tech, Oregon heads to the Pac-12 title game against No. 11 Arizona while TCU (Iowa State) and Baylor (No. 12 Kansas State) finish off their Big 12 slates. Alabama's task at hand with No. 17 Mizzou is not the easiest, but it's not the most difficult either. Plus, Cooper & Co. seem to appreciate the stakes.
Revenge was the obvious and necessary pregame angle of choice for the 2014 Iron Bowl. Last season's version offered every emotion and consequence. Alabama was the better team and walked away with a loss, missing three field goals before a fourth landed in the arms of Auburn's Chris Davis, who memorably raced 109 game-winning yards to the opposite endzone with a host of blockers and zero flags. One team's undefeated season came crashing down around it, the other ended up in the championship game. Saban said he'd never seen his team more motivated.
This Crimson Tide team remembered everything, but this wasn't about 2013 anymore. The stakes were high, but also one-sided. A three-loss Auburn team showed up to play the spoiler. Alabama, and, in turn, the SEC, kept moving forward.
"I think everyone is over last year. It was a year ago," senior offensive lineman Austin Shepherd said. "I think they're more excited to see where we can go. Like Coach (Saban) said, he just wants to see what we can do. I wanna see that, too."
