Alabama just made playoff committee look smarter than all of us

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dear College Football Playoff committee,

You were right, we were wrong.

Again.

Last Tuesday you told us 7-1 Alabama was the fourth-best team in the country. We, the public, responded with a collective, “Oh, c’mon.” We invoked a whole lot of shouts of bias. And “Ole Miss.”

But look at you now. Here’s guessing you’ll be handing out some high-fives and back-pats in Dallas this week after the Crimson Tide went out and bulldozed your No. 2 team, previously undefeated LSU 30-16. Meanwhile, look what happened to some of the teams people thought you should have had higher last week.

There’s no “D” in TCU, apparently. Oklahoma State destroyed your eighth-ranked Horned Frogs. (By the way, you’ll probably want to move up the No. 14 Cowboys quite a bit.) No. 7 Michigan State? Lost to 3-6 Nebraska. Not exactly playoff material. Even plucky No. 13 Memphis ran into a (Navy) ship it could not bring down.

Back here in Tuscaloosa, though, the Alabama defensive front put on its most dominant performance yet, holding presumptive Heisman front-runner Leonard Fournette to 13 yards on his first 15 carries and 31 yards on the night. He came in averaging a mere 193 per game.

We kept waiting for LSU’s offensive line to figure out how to block somebody, but the Tide defenders just kept coming — A’Shawn Robinson, Geno Smith, Dillon Lee, Dalvin Tomlinson ... well, we could rattle off all 11. They all either brought down Fournette or brought the heat on quarterback Brandon Harris at some point.

“They [the Tigers] run the ball down your throat the whole game,” said star linebacker Reggie Ragland, “and the big guys up front weren’t letting that happen. ... We knew we had to stop that guy. We stop him, we’ve got a good shot of stopping their whole offense.

Meanwhile, the Tide’s offense basically did to LSU exactly what the Tigers had hoped to do to them — run the ball down their throats. Derrick Henry ran 38 times for 210 yards and three touchdowns, while Kenyan Drake added 68 yards on 10 carries. 'Bama QB Jake Coker stumbled around at times, taking three deep sacks, but he also did a nice job keeping the LSU defense off balance with screens, slants and quick strikes to several different receivers.

'Bama basically put on its most 'Bama-esque performance to date, culminating with an epic 9:18 fourth-quarter drive to salt away the game.

Not that Saturday’s clinic will quiet the Tide’s skeptics. If anything, they only grew louder earlier in the day after Ole Miss — the team that handed Alabama its lone defeat way back on Sept. 19 — lost to 4-4 Arkansas, the Rebels’ third defeat of the year. In some corner of the Internet, someone is surely arguing that 7-1 Navy — by beating Memphis, which beat Ole Miss — should now be ranked higher than the Tide.

But you, wise men and woman of the committee, know well what we mere peons often forget — some college football teams get better and others worse over the course of the year. In fact, you taught us that last year by overlooking Ohio State’s Week 2 loss to mediocre Virginia Tech. The Buckeyes promptly went out and rewarded your faith in them by winning the playoff.

No one’s anointing this Alabama team champion of anything yet, only noting that it’s come a long way since Sept. 19. It’s now beaten four foes with six wins or better by margins of 18 (Wisconsin), 28 (Georgia), 18 (Texas A&M) and 14 (LSU).

Asked how different his team is from the day it lost to Ole Miss, Nick Saban initially replied, “I don’t think it’s any different. We’ve got the same players we had before.” But those same players have arguably matured because of that 43-37 loss.

“Don’t ask me why, but people seem to respond better when things don’t go well than when things are going well,” he said. “That game taught this team a lot in terms of what they needed to do to develop the kind of consistency and performance that we needed to have to be a good team.”

That starts with the fact that teams cannot run the ball on 'Bama’s front seven. Seriously. Coming into Saturday, the Tide were allowing just 2.6 yards per carry, third-best nationally, and promptly managed to hold the leading rusher in the entire sport to even fewer than that. Fournette constantly had defenders flying at him before he could reach the line of scrimmage. Defensive backs like Eddie Jackson and Marlon Humphrey often made the tackles.

Even including an 18-yard run early in the fourth quarter, Fournette had as many negative plays (four) as he did runs of 4-plus yards (four).

Alabama so thoroughly humbled Fournette that now his opponent’s star running back may have a better chance of winning the Heisman than the near-season-long front-runner. With TCU’s Trevone Boykin going down Saturday as well, Henry bolstered his case considerably with his second 200-plus day in his past three games. Outside of a forgettable performance against Louisiana-Monroe, he’s notched at least 95 yards in every outing.

“Derrick did the same thing he’s been doing, for some reason he just doesn’t get as much credit as the other guy [Fournette],” Coker said. “The other guy’s really good, too, he’s a great player, but so is [Henry]. He deserves every bit of credit he’s going to get.”

So just to be clear, Jake, you believe Henry, not Fournette, is the best running back in the country?

“Coming from me, yes,” he said with a chuckle, before adding: “Damn right he is.”

Henry will certainly help his cause if he can lead Alabama to a second-straight SEC title and playoff berth. Both goals are suddenly very attainable. The Tide sit alone in first in the West after Ole Miss’ loss. Next week they visit a 7-2 Mississippi State, followed by Charleston Southern and Auburn. A Florida team that eked past Vanderbilt 9-7 on Saturday awaits the West champ in Atlanta.

Anyone who did not like seeing Alabama all the way up at No. 4 in last week’s playoff rankings is going to be even more peeved Tuesday. Expect the Tide to move up to No. 2 behind only 9-0 Clemson. They control their playoff destiny, as they should.

The committee just figured that out a week earlier than the rest of us.