Alabama likely controlled its destiny to College Football Playoff. No longer.
Again, the Crimson Tide followed up a convincing win in a huge primetime game with an absolute failure in all three phases in a road game to a mediocre SEC team.
The parallels of this season for Alabama have been unreal.
Look back to September when Alabama dominated Wisconsin. Then the first bye week came. Alabama emerged with its hair on fire against Georgia and scored a huge win. The next week? Diego Pavia and Vanderbilt took it to the Tide.
You would think that would have been a lesson, but nope.
Fast forward to November, and what do they do? Dominant win over Missouri, a bye week, come out with your hair on fire against LSU and get a must win. How’d they follow that up? You guessed it.
Kalen Deboer and Alabama went to Norman as a two-touchdown favorite and got embarrassed.
It was Vanderbilt 2.0. It was like watching nearly the exact same game.
Oklahoma controlled the line of scrimmage. Oklahoma controlled the clock. Oklahoma dominated the game.
Just like Vanderbilt, this wasn’t a fluke. This wasn’t a kick six or something crazy going against Alabama. Sure, there was an absolutely horrific call in the fourth quarter that negated a Ryan Williams touchdown that would’ve cut it to 14 points, but outside of that Alabama just got smoked.
Oklahoma came into this game looking at what was sure to be a 5-7 season and yet another loss to a playoff contending team that had everything to play for. The only thing Oklahoma had to play for was pride. And, that was enough.
The natives will be restless in Tuscaloosa.
A 9-3 year was not out of the question. That should’ve been a reasonable expectation facing him in year one in the best league in the country. But, how did this team manage to go 9-3 with those wins over Georgia and LSU?
Handling success isn’t easy. Just ask Antonio Brown. However, this was a colossal failure from Deboer, his staff, his quarterback, and almost every person that was in crimson and white and not crimson and cream on Saturday.
